I've been blogging for about 6.5 years. I've never had a ton of followers, but the few interactions I did have were, for the most part, pleasant. I review books that are usually not very popular, and I think that may have made it difficult for people to interact via my posts.
Given the new laws concerning data privacy for EU visitors to blogs, and the fact that I find it to be a lot of work to create blog posts that are particularly appealing/engaging, I may be calling an end to this blog.
I want to say thank you to everyone who has followed and commented on the blog. I'm still around via email, Twitter and GR. That info will remain up on my contact page for a while at least. I may end up making this blog private in the future.
I do plan to still review all the titles I read on Goodreads, so if you are a GR user, please do follow me there. The direct link to my GR profile is located here if you'd like to talk books. If authors stumble onto the blog and would like to contact me for book reviews, I'm open to them. Just be aware that I will likely only review on Goodreads, Amazon, or Chapters (Canadian book retailer site) from now on. If you would like to send me book review requests, the email to send them to is on my contact page.
I may return here in the future, I just don't know.
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Review: The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It
The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It by Ricki LewisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Melissa's Musings
This book is really well written. Being that it deals with gene therapy, it has a lot of scientific background in it. I've taken biology a few times. Once in high school, once when getting my BA, and once when going back to school to get an associate's degree to be able to do a work exchange program. I took it so many times not because I didn't get it, but because it is easiest science to digest, IMO. So. I learned multiple times over about brain body connections, proteins, DNA, axons, neurons, etc. All of which helped me in reading this book.
Although, I will say, that this is written in such a way that even if you don't have much scientific background, it's still easy enough to understand.
I honestly thought this would be more of a third party memoir, about Corey, the boy who's treatment "saved" gene therapy. But it doesn't focus on him nearly as much as I thought it would. Instead it's more of a combination of short chapters on a variety of people and the disorders they live with, and some of them, ultimately die from.
As easy as this was to read, I do have to admit that I was less invested in Corey's story by the end. I skimmed over the last few pages of the book. He still had a way to go in his treatment from the sound of things, since they only did the gene therapy on one eye, so it would be interesting to find out where he is at in that process these days.
Even though this was less memoir and more scientific than I was hoping, it's still a great read.
Have you ever researched gene therapy, or read any books on it?
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Random Ramblings #7/8
I meant to post this last Sunday, but I just never got around to it, so here's 2 weeks of random ramblings. First, the week of March 3-10 and then March 11-17
This week has been quite long and tiring, though not much has happened.There's a lot of strange, underlying tension at work and keeping afloat of that can be tough.
Monday night after work I passed out really really early. I basically vegged out from the second I got home. My husband went to the store and was going to make something easy for dinner once he got home, but I was too tired to even eat dinner. I said no thank you, brushed my teeth and laid down about 8:30. I would have slept all the way through, I imagine, if it it weren't for our boisterous neighbor in the next building over. She likes to have ridiculously loud ( and, if I'm honest, my snarky guess is that they're fake) orgasms, at random times late at night. Monday night/Tuesday morning she woke me up at 2:15 am, from what felt like deep sleep. But her pitch is so high that it cuts right into my dreams and pulls me out. I definitely had a hard time getting up and ready when the alarm went off.
I drink a lot of tea now that I live in Canada. Being from Cali, I'm much more of an iced tea fan, but hot tea here is more the thing. Dearran likes to indulge my iced tea love though because he knows how I'm more used to iced tea. I really like just plain, Pureleaf tea. It's calorie free, yay! I like some of their flavored teas as well, but those are full of sugar, so I only drink them every once in a while. There's a new flavor out, pomegranate. I love it. It's so good, and nice an authentic, not overly sweet or fake. If you like iced tea, I definitely recommend it.
Thursday and Friday of last week were very emotionally charged, and left me feeling very upset.
This past week was equally awkward, but I've been putting my best foot forward in ignoring the bs.
The time change has really thrown me for a loop though. All this week, I've been ridiculously tired. I think I'm finally starting to get over it though. I barely remember what happened earlier in the week. I've really enjoyed the couple of nice sunny days we've had recently though.
Instead of overtime we have "flex time" where we are paid at straight time, that we can then use later to take time off. Since I'm going to California for the four day weekend at the end of the month, I requested a few hours off on Thursday the 29th. Because of our one person off at a time rule, I was hopeful no one would have requested it. But, our TL told me that someone else had requested the same time. I was okay with that, was just going to accept it and move on. Then my TL told me that she went to a manager on my behalf, and asked if I could also be off during that time. It was really kind of her to do that, especially without me asking. Luckily, the manager was fine with it, and I'll get to work 5 hours and leave a bit early that day, so that I can get all set to go on my trip. It gives me a bit of extra time to run errands like going to the bank to get some US cash, getting a haircut, and packing without as much of the rush.
This weekend I walked a ton on Saturday. I got over 10,000 steps, whereas most days I usually only get about 6000. I went to the mall and got a few new 15 dollar dresses from Old Navy, and a backup pair of these super comfy capris I found recently. Being so short, capris on me just become pants that fit perfectly and don't need to be hemmed.
After so much walking around yesterday, I really should have gotten on to laundry and that kind of stuff today, but it was raining this morning and I just wanted to stay in my comfy bed instead. So laundry will have to wait til tomorrow after work. The plan for the rest of the day is to finish up a book (I'm four books behind on my GR goal :( )
How have you been? Anything you want to share from your week? Let me know!
This week has been quite long and tiring, though not much has happened.There's a lot of strange, underlying tension at work and keeping afloat of that can be tough.
Monday night after work I passed out really really early. I basically vegged out from the second I got home. My husband went to the store and was going to make something easy for dinner once he got home, but I was too tired to even eat dinner. I said no thank you, brushed my teeth and laid down about 8:30. I would have slept all the way through, I imagine, if it it weren't for our boisterous neighbor in the next building over. She likes to have ridiculously loud ( and, if I'm honest, my snarky guess is that they're fake) orgasms, at random times late at night. Monday night/Tuesday morning she woke me up at 2:15 am, from what felt like deep sleep. But her pitch is so high that it cuts right into my dreams and pulls me out. I definitely had a hard time getting up and ready when the alarm went off.
I drink a lot of tea now that I live in Canada. Being from Cali, I'm much more of an iced tea fan, but hot tea here is more the thing. Dearran likes to indulge my iced tea love though because he knows how I'm more used to iced tea. I really like just plain, Pureleaf tea. It's calorie free, yay! I like some of their flavored teas as well, but those are full of sugar, so I only drink them every once in a while. There's a new flavor out, pomegranate. I love it. It's so good, and nice an authentic, not overly sweet or fake. If you like iced tea, I definitely recommend it.
Thursday and Friday of last week were very emotionally charged, and left me feeling very upset.
This past week was equally awkward, but I've been putting my best foot forward in ignoring the bs.
The time change has really thrown me for a loop though. All this week, I've been ridiculously tired. I think I'm finally starting to get over it though. I barely remember what happened earlier in the week. I've really enjoyed the couple of nice sunny days we've had recently though.
Instead of overtime we have "flex time" where we are paid at straight time, that we can then use later to take time off. Since I'm going to California for the four day weekend at the end of the month, I requested a few hours off on Thursday the 29th. Because of our one person off at a time rule, I was hopeful no one would have requested it. But, our TL told me that someone else had requested the same time. I was okay with that, was just going to accept it and move on. Then my TL told me that she went to a manager on my behalf, and asked if I could also be off during that time. It was really kind of her to do that, especially without me asking. Luckily, the manager was fine with it, and I'll get to work 5 hours and leave a bit early that day, so that I can get all set to go on my trip. It gives me a bit of extra time to run errands like going to the bank to get some US cash, getting a haircut, and packing without as much of the rush.
This weekend I walked a ton on Saturday. I got over 10,000 steps, whereas most days I usually only get about 6000. I went to the mall and got a few new 15 dollar dresses from Old Navy, and a backup pair of these super comfy capris I found recently. Being so short, capris on me just become pants that fit perfectly and don't need to be hemmed.
After so much walking around yesterday, I really should have gotten on to laundry and that kind of stuff today, but it was raining this morning and I just wanted to stay in my comfy bed instead. So laundry will have to wait til tomorrow after work. The plan for the rest of the day is to finish up a book (I'm four books behind on my GR goal :( )
How have you been? Anything you want to share from your week? Let me know!
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