Party of One

Today's Journey theme was party.  This has probably been the least motivating prompt for me so far.  For most of the ideas I've known almost immediately what I wanted to photograph or was at least excited about coming up with an idea throughout the day.  Not this one though.  I'm just not a party girl.  I don't get excited for parties or lots of people.  Especially when it's people I don't know!  I'd much rather sit at home, curled up in the chair with a comfy blanket, big mug of coffee, and a good book!  Basically exactly what I did all day today!  At one point, the coffee switched to hot chocolate though, and also I ran out of pages in the book.  

To me, that's a party though.  Diving into a fictional world while snug in the safety of my bunny slippers and heavy blanket is more desirable than a party with strangers, too much alcohol, and loud music.  Not that there aren't other kinds of parties.  I'm not all that keen to join my kids at one of their friend's houses for a Pinterest-worthy birthday party either.  I confess my kids haven't even had birthday parties the past couple years.  We celebrate with immediate family or take them out for a fun activity.  Not a party where I spend weeks cleaning the house and preparing goody bags and spending a small fortune on food.  I feel like those parties become more about the guests than the person you are celebrating.

So on today's icy snow day, I had my version of a party.  I finished my third book of the year.  It was a quick read, but also a fun little mystery that turns out is part of a series.  I'm sure I'll check out a few more of them this year when I'm looking for that kind of book.  After reading the seriously profound "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman followed by R.J. Palacio's "Wonder", for my next book I wanted something that didn't make me have major revelations about life or leave tears streaming down my face.  

The book was called "French Pressed" and I grabbed it because of the whole "coffeehouse mystery" bit on the cover.  Mysteries were my favorite genre for the longest time.  And well, coffee has been my favorite drink since I was six.  There were a few books that appeared to be part of this series on the shelf at the library, but I didn't pay close attention to which one was actually first.  Turns out, this is book 6!  I didn't notice right away that I was reading a book well into a series like that, but it became obvious the characters had a history and that I'd missed events along the way.  Still it stood alone fairly well.  I enjoyed the coffee bits, but the foodie talk did get a bit overboard at times.  I didn't know until the end who the killer actually was which was nice.  I suspected a completely different person the entire time.  It's fun to be surprised.  It was the perfect book to waste away a snow day on, and I look forward to checking out a few of the others in the series!