Crime, Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

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Ok! It is soooo hot here. All week it's been over 100° and it's not even August. I don't know what's going to happen. I was out last night trying to water a few plants and it was still 88°. Plus, the humidity is killing my hair.

I don’t like this hot weather because it effects my breathing

Does anyone else like watching hummingbirds? It's always said they are drawn to the color red. I have 3 feeders; 2 red and 1 clear. They empty the clear one lots more than the red. Sup with that?

The heat is killing me, it was 115 a couple of days ago.

I love, love, love, love hummingbirds. We have one that comes around early in the am and just before dusk. There were more when the trees were in bloom. One would chase all the others away. I'm not sure about the color. I had a feeder and a lot of bees were attracted to it, so I got another one that had a guard so the bees couldn't get the liquid. I continued to fell up the original one because of all the problems the bee colonies are having.

yes, I also enjoy watching the hummingbirds quickly come by at my mother's garden. she said: 'if only we could easily take pictures or record them everytime they visit here'. our neighbors have feeders at their garage, so we assumed they stop by to eat there 1st & then visit our backyard afterwards.

So Jezzy, are the birds drinking nectar from flowers or does your mother have a feeder out too?

I'm amazed that they are out in our extreme heat.

Good evening everyone!

My name is Àngela and I have been a Goodreads member for quite a while now.

I have an open offer for you guys (and no, I am not asking for money).

I am receiving formal education as a translator and also have experience translating from English to Spanish and Spanish to English and I find myself now on a long vacation realising I am a bit addicted to work.

All of you are here because you are book lovers and I figure some of you love writing as well. Maybe someone is already busy with a manuscript or has everything ready for self-publishing.

If that is your case and you would be interested in translating your book into spanish you can get in touch with me and I will help you out with that (for free) in exchange for a mention in your book or a kind e-mail saying I'm lovely hehe.

If you know someone who is writing a story please let him know about me and who knows, maybe a new friendship will flourish =)

Happy reading to all of you, I hope some of you find yourselves on a relaxing holiday with a lot of time on your hands to spend with a great novel!! =)

Sheri, my mother doesnt have any feeders out. those hummingbirds just suddenly showed up & flew from flower to flower. i saw 1 of them a few days ago around 6-8PM.

Jezzy wrote: "yes, I also enjoy watching the hummingbirds quickly come by at my mother's garden. she said: 'if only we could easily take pictures or record them everytime they visit here'. our neighbors have fee..."

I used to get hummingbird pictures. We had a patio with a couple of chairs where we'd sit in the morning with our coffee and in the afternoon after dinner. I hung a hummingbird feed out there and our coffee/after dinner times were the time the hummingbirds would come out. I took tons of pictures, mostly of the same guy. The can be pretty territorial and will often chase others away... which he did.

wow Gem, that's incredible! didnt know that they are territorial in searching for nectars. they are so tiny & fast, how on earth can you tell which hummingbird was the regular visitor? you must have owned a sharp pair of binoculars or a specific camera in taking his pictures?

Jezzy that’s way cool about your mothers flowers. Bet flower nectar is more beneficial to the birds than person made sugar water. I have lots of flowers and see them drinking from them sometime but mostly from the feeders,

Gem I take pictures too. I’m convinced some of the same birds come back year after year. There lifespan is only 3-5 years.

We got some much needed rain in the form of a hellacious storm. I think 2 modems got fried.

Jezzy wrote: "wow Gem, that's incredible! didnt know that they are territorial in searching for nectars. they are so tiny & fast, how on earth can you tell which hummingbird was the regular visitor? you must hav..."

The first year all the other birds that visited were female and/or juveniles. I got enough pictures of the male (brightly colored) with some distinctive markings. The pictures were pretty up close, I only sat about six feet away from the feeder and had the camera set to zoom ahead of time. Admittedly I got a lot of blurry pictures too, lol.

Sheri, yes they love my mother's flowers. i'll ask her on which ones they frequent in drinking the nectars.

Gem, that's amazing. my mother takes pictures of her flowers & plants, then post them on FB. i doubt if she could ever catch those hummingbirds in action.

Pictures is the reason I joined FB. I don't get into the politics or drama on there. I just like looking at pictures.

So 2 modems did get fried in the thunder and lightening storm yesterday and 1 Smart TV. Wouldn't you just know it. We have 3 TVs in this house, 2 old, 1 new. Guess which one got murdered by lightening.

Sheri, my mother said they picked Gumamela & Rose of Sharon.

btw, i only lasted 8months when i had an FB account. i'm the only family member who doesnt have FB. i couldnt handle all the drama happening there, it wasnt worth it & it was a waste of my time.

i bet the new TV was struck. it amazes me how dangerous the lightnings here in the US. back in my home country, our lightnings only dance in the sky. they never strike down to the ground.

Jezzy, that's amazing about the lightening. We have a surge protector on our stuff and this is the 2nd time we've had lightening run in on something in our house. We've lived her 20 years so I guess that's not too bad. We've had lots of trees hit though. We had a beautiful dogwood tree that was hit so many times it finally died. I think storms are beautiful to watch though.

Thanks for asking your mother. I have Gumamela and Rose of Sharon in my yard so the hummingbirds are getting the best of both.

no problem, Sheri. my mother assumed that those hummingbirds went to our neighbor's feeders 1st coz she hasnt seen a lot of them lately. maybe our neighbors were very generous in preparing those bird food or drink.

i agree, storms are fascinating to watch. i like the part when it cools down a heatwave esp. in my hot home country, Philippines. that's so scary about these lightnings here. when we had our cable TV years ago, i saw in the news at night that a female teen was struck to death by a lightning somewhere in the open field in the afternoon.

We've had extremely high temperatures in the UK this week. The all-time record temperature was recorded in Cambridge at 38.7 on Thursday 25th. If this is validated by the UK Met Office it will beat the previous record of 38.5 in Faversham, Kent in 2003.

It has been unbearable here as it is a very humid heat and we have now had thunderstorms and continuous rain today (Saturday). Train travel has been disrupted as our train tracks are not designed to cope with these kind of temperatures.

Hoping it gets back to a normal kind of weather soon. Although weather is always a conversation topic here - we English are known for it!

I’M HOME FROM MY VACATION!!!

Christine wrote: "I’M HOME FROM MY VACATION!!!"

How was it. You seem happy to be home.

Maureen, i didnt know the UK can reach those high temps just like the Philippines. i always thought that you mostly have cloudy, cold weathers & occasional sunny days there. we Filipinos, also use Celsius in checking the weather until my family & i moved here in the US. i had to google the conversion table coz they use Fahrenheit here.

Jezzy wrote: "Maureen, i didnt know the UK can reach those high temps just like the Philippines. i always thought that you mostly have cloudy, cold weathers & occasional sunny days there. we Filipinos, also use ..."

Hi Jezzy, these temperatures are absolutely exceptional for us. June, July and August are our warmest months - can usually get up to a maximum of 26 C on hot days here. But it's so unpredictable as we are an island and our weather blows in mainly from the Atlantic and the West.

Today it's only 18C and rainy, but weather forecasters say we are due for another heatwave next week up to 30C - it's coming from the Sahara.

Where do you live and what kind of weather do you have at the moment?

Sheri I had a great time on my vacation but I’m very happy to be home

In in North Carolina USA and our temperatures have been over 100°F lately. It's horrible. August is our hottest month so I don't even know what to expect.

2 of my grand children start school tomorrow. The school is cool and I sure hope they don't have to go outside for PE. I guess school sports will start though. Poor kids.

Oh that’s cool and I hope you have a great time on your trip to North Carolina and I hate hot weather and i’m surprised that your grandkids have school tomorrow already and thank god the school is cool

Here’s the link my Walk for Wishes page




https://secure2.wish.org/site/TR?pg=t...

Maureen, i see that US & UK have the same summer months. our summer months in the Philippines are March, April & May then school begins in June. we can have temps from 30'C & higher in those months. we are an archipelagic country & a tropical country, so we only have dry & wet seasons. we are prone to earthquakes & typhoons.

we currently reside in Illinois. our weather update today will be 81'F (27.2'C), we will be having thunderstorms soon. yesterday though, we reached 90'F (32.2'C).

Christine wrote: "Oh that’s cool and I hope you have a great time on your trip to North Carolina and I hate hot weather and i’m surprised that your grandkids have school tomorrow already and thank god the school is ..."

I live in North Carolina not visiting. I think it's early too but they get a week off in October and a week off in February.

Jezzy, 81° that's some nice temps for this time of year. Do you have much humidity?

yes Sheri, we also have humid days here. that 90'F temp was just hot, not humid in my opinion. what's your current weather today? just checked accuweather.com in our area, for 3days we're gonna have late 70's & the rest of this week will be in mid 80's. i'm fine with it as long as there will be long hours of sunshine. we Filipinos, tend to shy away from the heat of the sun coz of our scorching temps there. now that we reside here, i appreciate & welcome the warmth coz after summer it will be cold again. i'm not looking forward towards autumn & the worst season named winter.

Oh ok Sheri and that’s cool that your grandkids get off from school in October

Jezzy, today it was 98° but the humidity wasn't all that bad. Scorching hot though. Hard to be outside. I'm counting down the days until winter.

Sheri, i guess i'm part of the minority who loves Summer. even though we migrated here in this country for more than a decade, i still cant adjust to the brutal & harsh Winter. everything we do on that freezing season is a nuisance, in my opinion, from changing heavy clothes after a shower to hesitantly driving outside the snowy/slick streets going to work.

Jezzy wrote: "I still cant adjust to the brutal & harsh Winter. everything we do on ..."

Winter and autumn are great seasons for reading though. I love reading books with foggy, misty, wintry settings as the winter approaches. You have to be snuggled up in a cosy chair with a blanket. I found a great book that I read last year Winter Solstice by Rosamund Pilcher. Not a mystery - more of a romance, mainly set in Scotland. Scotland has much colder winters than England.

Jezzy you need to move in with me :). Our winters aren't harsh. We may have a few snowy days but it usually melts the next day. Our cold winters would be laughed at by people in MN. We just get a little cooler days for a while. I'm like you and wouldn't like it if the cold was really cold and lasted a long time. I hate wearing a coat and rarely do.

Maureen, honestly that doesnt matter to me. i can find those foggy, misty settings during Summer. my best time to read is at night when everyone is asleep even my cat. not much of a traveler myself but i'd sure like to explore both Scotland & England when i either read or watch about them.

Sheri, that sounds very nice. the best part when snow melts the next day coz there's no need for constant shoveling. yes, even people here would criticize those people around the South that they get panicky when snow reaches many inches. i thought: "i'd feel the same about that. jeez, you can have all the snow you want! not worth it to break my back after i shovel."

it seems that most of the major publishers have some form of this new model planned for the libraries - it's sad.

https://mashable.com/article/macmilla...

Well this is crumby Paris. Seems almost illegal.

looks like it's going to push people towards buying books so that the publishers can increase profits.
it will make it difficult on the libraries to meet customer needs as well

right because it will force libraries to continually repay publishers if they want to keep and ebook. Everyone needs to make a profit but this is horrible. Am I correct in understanding that it's only McMillians Publishing?

So we've finally had some rain and it's a little cooler today. I've been in the yard and it's so nice not to be sweating like a pig out there. Sad to say we'll warm back up Monday.

2 of my grand children have already started back to school and the youngest starts Thursday. Seems a little early for me. When do schools start in your area?

Ours are usually the week before Labor Day (last week in August).

Sheri wrote: "right because it will force libraries to continually repay publishers if they want to keep and ebook. Everyone needs to make a profit but this is horrible. Am I correct in understanding that it's o..."

I'm not sure but i think other publishers are doing something similar. I had read another article on it prior to this one but can't find it to post the link

Sheri wrote: "2 of my grand children have already started back to school and the youngest starts Thursday. Seems a little early for me. When do schools start in your area?"

My grandkids in Az start on Thursday, not sure about the kiddos in NoLa.

Paris (kerbytejas) wrote: "it seems that most of the major publishers have some form of this new model planned for the libraries - it's sad.

https://mashable.com/article/macmilla......"

Thanks for the information, I just reposted on Facebook.

Have you guys had an extremely busy summer? I seem busy all the time but I don't know doing what. I know I haven't spent enough time with my grans and 3 of them are back in school and the oldest goes back to college next week.

Sheri wrote: "Have you guys had an extremely busy summer? I seem busy all the time but I don't know doing what. I know I haven't spent enough time with my grans and 3 of them are back in school and the oldest go..."

It was a busy summer. It's really strange to have them going to school five days a week all day, for the last two year it was only two hours a day, four days a week. And in preparation of us moving my dil has someone picking them up from school and taking them to their afternoon/evening activities. All I have to do is give them baths and put them to bed plus weekend. It's quite a change for me.

I’ve been so busy this summer but I love being busy lol