Sunday Salon: June 25, 2017 Greetings from the UK

My life in books:
Reading over the past couple of weeks has been really slow since I spent two weeks ago nursing my daughter through wisdom teeth surgery and this past week we're on vacation so it's go, go, go.

• The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama--yet another wonderful book by this author
• The Right Side by Spencer Quinn--a woman Afghanistan vet deals with her PTSD

Challenge updates:

• Read Your Own Damn Books--My goal is to read 25 books from my TBR shelves this year. So far I've read 28, adding one in the past two weeks.
• Travel the World in Books--The idea is to read books set in as many countries as possible. In the past two weeks I added one new country: Japan.
• Literary Escapes--Similar to the previous challenge, this one tracks the US states. In the past two weeks I added no new states so I am still at 16 states total.
• Read all of the ALA YA Award Winners--I only have one book left for this challenge.

My life outside books:

Working:
Work is finished for the summer. Well, sort of. My normal job finished as of Friday, June 16 after I ran a couple days of Google trainings for our district teachers, which went well. But I am teaching an online American Government course starting July 1.

Family:

Two weeks ago was devoted to nursing my daughter through getting her wisdom teeth out. Actually, it went well with minimal swelling and she just did Advil and Tylenol for pain. Lots of smoothies, scrambled eggs, and mashed potatoes. Talk about a boring diet! Now we're on vacation and her pain med intake is greatly reduced. It is amazing how long the achy-ness continues.

University of St. Andrews

We have been in the United Kingdom since Monday and so far it's been great! We stayed with my brother and his family for the first couple of days in Kent, which is such a beautiful area and it was wonderful to see them all. Since Wednesday afternoon we've been in Scotland with my daughter and one of my nieces. They are only 8 weeks apart so are really enjoying spending time together. I brought them up to Edinburgh and St. Andrews to look at the universities here to see if they want to apply. Neither one was taken with the University of Edinburgh, but my daughter has decided to definitely apply to the University of St. Andrews. The medieval town and university (founded in 1413!) are wonderful. And we were up here for the Summer Solstice, which was really fun; it was dark for only a few hours!

Watching:

• I finished all but one episode of Madam Secretary before we left home and I am looking forward to season 3 becoming available on Netflix. I thought I could watch the last episode of season 2, but it isn't on the British Netflix so now I have to wait until I get home.
• While up here in Scotland my daughter, niece, and I have been watching Designated Survivor each night, which I am quite enjoying even though bits of it are so far-fetched.