The suspense is killing me! (Take that with a grain of salt.)

Storm Prey (Book 20 of 36 in the series) ~ by John Sandford, 2010, suspense thriller, 416 pages

There's a storm brewing.  Very early (4:45 a.m.) on a bitterly cold Minnesota morning, three big men burst through the door of a hospital pharmacy, duct-tape the hands, feet, mouth, and eyes of two pharmacy workers, and clean the place out.  But then things swiftly go bad, one of the workers dies, and the robbers hustle out to their truck and find themselves for just one second face-to-face with a blond woman in the garage.  She is Weather Karkinnen, surgeon, wife of an investigator named Lucas Davenport.

Did she see enough?  Can she identify them?  Gnawing it over later, it seems to them there is only one thing they can do:  Find out who she is, and eliminate the only possible witness.

On Amazon, 69% of reviewers give five stars to this Lucas Davenport thriller from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.  This is one of the "millions" of books stacked all over my apartment (see HERE) that have been donated to the Crown Center library, probably by a resident.

Week in Review

• On Tuesday, I remembered old friends celebrating St. Patrick's Day together, HERE.
• My word for Wednesday was quiddity, HERE.
• Friday was the first day of spring, HERE.
• Saturday's subject was eating black-eyed peas and hummus, HERE.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Black-eyed peas

Do you like black-eyed peas?  I do, but I haven't eaten any lately.  I was just thinking about their nutrition value, so I looked it up.  The illustration below shows that they are full of vitamins, proteins, minerals, and fiber.  They are also good for heart health.  So people would eat them on New Year's Day for luck.

Eating black-eyed peas (with cornbread, in my family) on New Year's Day was supposed to make us rich or something.  I have now missed New Year's Day by several weeks at this point, but I should go look to see if I have a can of them in my kitchen cabinet because my mouth is watering.

But first, let me tell you why I was thinking about black-eyed peas in the first place.  I was casually scrolling on my phone and came across this:  "The black-eyed peas can sing us a tune, but the chick peas can only hummus one."  I know I have hummus in the fridge, if I don't find the other.

Spring and happiness go together, don't they?

March 20th is the first day of spring in my part of the world, the time of year when night and day are of equal length.  Today is also the International Day of Happiness.  How can you celebrate?  Maybe call a friend to chat, or even better, get together.  People all over the world will be celebrating this day.  It's a time to cultivate happiness and connection.

Looking for a happy illustration, I found these three characters.  They are doing some sort of happy dance, aren't they?  Can you name all three?  (Names below.)

Today's happy dance is brought to us

by Lucy, Snoopy, and Sally.  We miss

you, Charlie Brown, Linus, Woodstock,

and Schroeder with your piano.  (Oh, wait,

do I hear a happy tune in the background?)

Quiddity is today's word

quiddity (ˈkwɪdəti), quiddities (noun) =  (1) the essential quality of a person or thing; (2) a distinctive feature; a peculiarity.  Example:  My quirks and quiddities make me unique.  (I found the illustration HERE, to give credit to the artist.)

St. Patrick's Day

My friends Marilyn and Donna celebrating St. Patrick's Day in 2015 in the Circle@Crown Café.  Notice they are wearing green.  Neither of them is still with us, but today (reminded by this photo) I'll think of them and St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, who is said to have died on March 17 around 493 A.D.

Let me end this blog post with a bit of humor:  "A best friend is like a four-leaf clover:  hard to find and lucky to have."

Please don't let the word "philosophy" keep you from reading this post

Philosophy 101: From Plato and Socrates to Ethics and Metaphysics, an Essential Primer on the History of Thought ~ by Paul Kleinman, 2013, philosophy, 288 pages

A reviewer wrote that this books takes you "on a journey through the development of human intellectual thought from several hundred years B.C. to present."  That's a fair summary.  Since philosophy was part of my double major in college, I smiled when I saw that someone had donated this little book to the Crown Center library.  I'll probably read it before shelving it (or trading it for fiction, which people living here are likely to read).  Hey, I see The Thinker musing in the top right corner.

Week in Review

• On Monday, I mused about walking to the store for groceries, HERE.
• On Tuesday, I wrote about a book I had decided to re-read, HERE.
• On Wednesday, my subject was a novel set in Egypt, HERE.
• My Thursday Thoughts were about the massive piles of books donated to the Crown Center library that are currently piled up in my apartment, HERE.
• My Book Beginning for Friday was from a novel about swimmers, HERE.
• Saturday was Pi Day, pronounced Pie Day, so I mentioned both fruit pies and pizza pie, HERE.  I am certain some of you who read this will remember "pi equals 3.14" from your math class and say, "Philosophy and now math?"

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Today is Pi Day

What is Pi Day?  I first learned that Pi equals 3.14 (with a longer string of numbers, if you are really interested) when I was a youngster in school in the 1950s.  The day itself dates to 1988, though, when (according to what I found online) "physicist Larry Shaw began celebrations at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco."

But it was 2009 when Congress designated every March 14 to be a holiday.  Why?  I read somewhere that someone hoped it would spur more interest in math and science.  Today, I read that it is, fittingly enough, also Albert Einstein’s birthday and (get this!) also the day that Stephen Hawking died.  I'd say they are probably the two biggest names in math and science most of us could come up with.

So celebrate by eating a piece of pie.  It could be a slice of pie like those above or, if you want to be different, it could be a slice of pizza pie.  I want pepperoni.