Brr It's Cold Outside!

Hi Dear Reader,

How are you doing?

I feel like I talk about the weather a lot, but I do live in Minnesota and I work outside, so it is inevitable. This week it was cold, hovering around the zero degree Fahrenheit. It makes working outside miserable.

I don’t ride when it is this cold. I go out and check on my horses, feed them carrots, and give them love. They don’t mind the cold as they both have thick winter coats and have all-they-can-eat hay. The barn manager does feed them extra senior feed and “special” hay when it is this cold. Amber (the red dun or brown one) always looks for treats and I have a hard time getting her ears in the shot. Charlie was standing in the hay feeder to reach the good stuff in the center of the round bale. He was able to get out just fine, but it is no wonder he got cut a couple of months ago. 

 

We have been spending a lot of time indoors. Little Bocks have been baking cookies and coloring. We found a website to AI generate our own coloring pages. It is ColorBliss. We’ve enjoyed making our pages to color. You just put in a prompt say “Majestic horse running through a field of wildflowers” and it outputs a PDF that you can print. Sometimes, the AI isn’t accurate, like the legs on the horse aren’t quite right, but little kids don’t care as long as they can color the horse.

As for being a horse doctor, I catch up on all my journal reading and recorded lectures. Our national organization videoed our national conference. I wasn’t able to go this year, but am working my through the conference. It is convenient to sit on my couch and listen to the latest innovations in equine medicine. When it is this cold, I usually only see sick, urgent care/emergency patients, which puts a gray cloud over my head. (Between you and me, it is hard to write about my job with that in my headspace.) Now to go eat some cookies.

Have you read anything good lately?

I have a quick poll for you on books on my Substack. Take a minute and answer the questions, leave a comment, or email me your thoughts.

The questions are: What are your preferred way to read books? Which app or device do you use to read e-books? Do you use KU?

I am always curious as to how you read!

I usually read on my phone through my library, kindle, or nook apps. If I like the ebook, I do buy the physical copy of it for my tiny library. Or I buy used books from the used bookstore downtown. I used to have an original Kindle Fire, which I loved. But when the battery stopped holding a charge, I tried out other Kindles and just couldn’t get into them.

I came across a new ereader app for my phone from Bookshop.org. It is fairly new and they only have traditionally published books available at this time. According to their website, they will have indie author books soon. (Yah!) I did download the app and try out Pride and Prejudice on it. The interface is very clean and minimalist. The reading part is very nice. They have an option to highlight, add notes, or share quotes. In my opinion, it is definitely beating out my Nook app for ease of use and is more eye-appealing than my Kindle app. Let me know what you think about it!

I know I’m supposed to have a short story to share this week. I ran out of time to edit it and it is still a jumble of words. I’ll be sharing it next week. I do have a few books for you to check out.

I hope you have a safe and warm week. I’ll talk to you next week. Hugs!

Allie

P.S. I have some free or $0.99 reads on my Substack. Go there and check them out!