Things Are Getting A Bit Stranger
Good morning,
It is definitely going to be a multiple cup of coffee kind of day today. Had a wonderful break, but probably stayed up a bit late many of those nights. Reality hit this morning when my alarm went off at 6:45 AM. I wanted to chuck my phone. So yeah, drinking a ton of coffee today.
Had a wonderful Thanksgiving break though. We hung out and watched some great shows together, had some wonderful food, and just a great time. Speaking of shows, of course we had to watch the first part of season 5 of Stranger Things. We have been waiting and waiting for the show to return. I actually told my youngest daughter that I wasn't sure how I would feel about it because it had been so long between seasons. Instantly though, as soon as the new season started, I was back into it and excited to experience it again. The initial plan was just to watch the first one or two episodes. But, we ended up binging all four. We weren't planning on it, but once we started, we couldn't stop. We had to know what happened next. Now we get the agonizing weight until Christmas Day when we can watch more. So glad this show is back, loving the hell out of it, can't believe what's happened already in season 5, and can't wait to see what happens in the next couple of episodes.
I mentioned good food, we went to my wife's sister's house for Thanksgiving with my wife's side of the family on Thursday. That was a really nice time. I got to hang out with my nieces and nephews, catch up with them, and enjoy some really damn good food. My wife and her sister make some pretty damn amazing Thanksgiving food. It was a really nice time. And, I have to say a big thank you to my oldest nephew who bought me Mortal Kombat One for my PS five. We were chatting about my PS five, accessible games, and stuff like that, and out of nowhere he decided to go ahead and buy Mortal Kombat One for me. That was so unexpected and just such an amazing thing for him to do for me. I truly appreciate it. It was a great Thanksgiving with some wonderful food and time with family.
Did we go Black Friday shopping? Hell no, we stayed home, lit a fire in our fireplace, and watched the Iowa Hawkeyes take on the Nebraska Cornhuskers. I'm proud to say that the Iowa Hawkeyes won, like always. That was a great game. It was nice just hanging out at home, avoiding crowds and all of that shit, and just enjoying some great football. We also spent that evening getting our house decorated for Christmas. Generally, we wait till right after Thanksgiving to get our Christmas stuff up. So, my wife, myself, and our youngest daughter worked on getting all of the stuff up and out of the basement, and everything decorated around the house and set up. It is very Christmasy no matter which room you're in now. I love it. So happy to have all of the lights and trees back up again.
We got our asses handed to us with our first major winter storm of the season starting on Friday night and going through Saturday evening. Snow this time of year here in Iowa is not unheard of. Hell, we've had 6 inches of snow in October before. But, the last several years, we haven't gotten snow till later in December, or even January before we saw snow on the ground. From that storm, we saw 10+ inches come down. That was, well, wonderful I guess. I love snow on the ground, a fire going in the fireplace, and all of that, I just don't love shoveling it. But, and I have to say another big thank you here, our neighbors went out Saturday evening to work on their driveway and sidewalks, and while they were at it they took care of ours too. We have awesome neighbors here in our neighborhood. Was so thankful for the help. Sunday was a lot easier than going out and touching everything up with shovels and cleaning up what had drifted back in. I live by some really amazing people I gotta say. I'm sure that won't be the only snowfall of the season, so I'm sure at some point I will be out there shoveling a lot more of it, and I will get the chance to shovel my neighbors driveway and sidewalks and help them out. Hey, maybe we'll actually have a white Christmas this year. It's been years since that's happened. We'll just have to see I guess.
Finished reading Shitshow by Chris Panatier. This was a fun book. It deals with a portal to a dark carnival appearing inside a port-o-potty. Yeah, that's just awesome right there. Seriously, I really enjoyed this book. It was a lot of fun. A great story, a great main character, a fun setup and storyline, and just a lot of cool elements. Really great book by Chris. If you want some fun horror fiction to get a laugh out of and also be grossed out a bit by, grab yourself a copy of this one. Great book!
Currently reading: The Fisherman by John Langan.
Currently listening: my Lacuna Coil playlist, because it's always a great day for their music. I also listened to my Greta Van Fleet playlist, and my Metal playlist a bit.
Currently watching: sadly, the last regular season games for Big Ten college football. Was proud to see Iowa beat Nebraska, and sad when Michigan lost to Ohio State. I've really enjoyed this season and all of the great games I've gotten to watch. As I mentioned above, we watched the first 4 episodes of season 5 of Stranger Things. Loving it, just loving it! Enjoyed a couple of episodes of season 4 of Mayor of Kingstown on Paramount+. Hell yeah! Mike is such a bad ass! We also watched another great episode of season 2 of Landman on Paramount+. Loving where everything's going. Definitely watch this one if you have a chance. and, of course, I watched another amazing episode of IT: Welcome To Derry on HBO Max. Fuck, I love how creepy, weird, and addicting this show is!
Well, I'm gonna try to get some work done today. I'm really tired and trying to wake up, but I also have some stuff I want to get done. I've been working behind the scenes on getting more content ready to go for January to release here on my Substack. Currently, I have 2 articles and 4 poems ready to go. I have 3 short stories I need to get working on and ready to go yet. So, maybe that's what I'll get done today. I do need to sit down and get some shopping done, because Christmas is approaching, and I need to get my wife's presence ordered. Love buying her stuff, and can't wait for her to open her presence this Christmas! I also want to check out Mortal Kombat One. I was planning on spending some time on Saturday checking out the game, but I kind of forgot how these new game systems and games themselves work now. The game did a download thing from the disk, which I was fine with because it was only going to take 10 minutes or so. Then, once I thought I could go ahead and start playing, I didn't realize that it needed to do a game update, which was about 128 gigs and was estimated to take seven hours. So, I didn't get to check the game out on Saturday. So, hoping this week to have time to sit down and really get into the game and see how things work and hopefully enjoy it.
OK, I'm going to pound more coffee and get some work done. I hope you are having a wonderful Monday morning, if you got hit with a snow storm you were able to unbury yourself too, and that you have a wonderful week. I hope you have a massive amount of hot coffee sitting right there next to you, and you're guzzling it like I am. Take it easy out there everybody, stay safe and warm, and have a great week. Thanks so much for reading, and I'll talk to you soon my friends.
Thank you for reading this weeks newsletter. I hope to see you back here next week. Be yourself, be original, and be bloody.
- Matthew R. Taylor
Find all of my books on Amazon, including my newest book Dark, at the following link. There you will be able to grab yourself my new book, along with everything else I've written and published. Thanks so much, and I truly hope you enjoy my fiction and poetry.