Five on Friday - November 3, 2023

It's November!  How did that happen so fast?!?   Glad you popped in for the first Five on Friday of the month.  This is a big month around our house.  Eric's and my birthdays are in November, along with both our mothers.  It's going to be a whirlwind of a month!   Let's kick it off with my five for this week ~

1.  Daylight Savings Time Ends

As much as I'll love having an extra hour this weekend, I'm so sad to be losing an hour of daylight.  We are fast approaching the time of year when I go to work in the dark and drive home in the dark.  Way too much dark!  Let this serve as your reminder to set your clocks back an hour Saturday night before you go to bed.  Good luck with adjusting your body next week!

2.  Now and Then by the Beatles

Being billed as "the last Beatles song", Now and Then was released this week thanks to new technology.  The song is possible because John Lennon had recorded a piano-and-vocal demo in the late 1970s.  Yoko Ono gave it and some other Lennon demos to the surviving Beatles in 1994.  Fast forward to 2023 and we have a new Beatles song!  If you want to learn more about it, there's a 12-minute documentary streaming on Disney+.

3.  The Gilded Age

I'm so excited that The Gilded Age is back for season 2 and is airing on HBO.  This American historical drama covers the economic growth in the booming years of New York City.  There's plenty of drama as the show highlights the dynamics of a society wrestling with families from old money and new money.  

We have 8 new episodes to look forward to.  One will drop each week on Sunday starting last week and going through December 17.  

4.  Jack Frost:  A Novella

First - what the heck is a novella?  Here's the definition I found - "A 'novella' is a piece of prose fiction shorter than a novel but longer than a short story."  Okay, now that we know that we can get excited about Debbie Macomber's new book Jack Frost.  I usually try to read a Christmas story or two during the holidays and I'm excited to enjoy this one.  Here's the summary ~

With the rest of her family on a cruise, Lindsay Calhoun will be spending her first Christmas alone, so she volunteers to plan an especially festive holiday party for her company. Her coworkers are grateful—except for tall, quiet Jack Taylor. Jack has always been a loner, but something about Christmas puts him in an unusually foul mood.

Despite Jack’s Scrooge-like complaints, the party is a success, ending only with a sudden snowstorm. As Lindsay cleans up and Jack looks for lost keys, they are the last ones in the building. Then the power goes out. The locks malfunction. Lindsay and Jack are stuck together with no rescue in sight.

While the two wait out the storm, there’s nothing to do but talk. Once they drop their defenses, they learn surprising truths about each other. After the lights come back on, neither knows whether to pretend it never happened—or let their undeniable attraction bring them together again, and lead to something more.

Jack Frost is a celebration of the romantic magic of Christmastime, when something as simple as a gingerbread cookie can offer a new beginning, and when love can surprise us when we least expect it.

5.  Stop it...

Now let's get the weekend started!  We're headed to Kansas City to see friends, eat great food, and start our birthday celebrations.  See you week!