My daughter will be flying in from Massachusetts later on today, and I know that she is hoping that our warm and muggy days hold out during her visit. The weather out east has been an eye-opening experience for her.

Yesterday we were wearing elbow-length shirts, but today is supposed to only get up to 63*… Not as bad as Cambridge winters, but certainly not as good as our previous 70* days.

Every once in a while my husband and I talk about where we would like to retire – when he finally retires. He comes from Ohio, and I have such fond memories of my grandmother’s home in northern Iowa >>> Those two states come up a lot. We had a little bit of a cold snap two weeks ago (I think it got down in the 40s) and my husband again said we should scrap those two states off of the list of possible retirement destinations…

I have to admit, although I miss the beauty of the four seasons… autumns with the beautiful leaf colors and winters with the pristine snowfalls. I also remember driving on black ice, doing a 180* unintended circle on a bridge (thank goodness there were no other cars present before I was able to straighten up… and also, that my car stopped before going over the side of the bridge!)

Getting back to the original point of my entry… My daughter is flying in for the holidays, and I am in the midst of trying to get the house cleaned. (When did she start taking on a “guest” status to me?!?) We are so fortunate to have our son still living here in town, so it will be the four of us for the holidays.

It seems my housework break is up… I have a few more things to get done before picking her up at the airport…

I have the same routine that I go through every single morning.  As soon as I come downstairs, I take care of “my birds.” For those of you who have been “with me” for a while, you know that since our sweet 16 1/2 year old puppy left us, I have taken up feeding the birds in our back yard. (Just call me “the crazy bird lady”!!!)

This morning, right after I finished filling the bird feeders, cleaning/filling the bird baths, and tossing the first (of several) handfuls of raw peanuts on the ground, I came back in to get on with my daily routine. As I was getting my first cup of coffee, I heard a ruckus of Blue Jays outside. For those of you who don’t know – Blue Jays are loud!

I looked out and was absolutely shocked to see a Cooper’s Hawk in our yard. In the twenty years we have lived in this house, I have seen a couple of hawks flying over head, but never (and I mean never) seen one land. And this one was in our yard!

However, this morning this hawk had not only landed in our yard, he was enjoying a hearty breakfast >>> I was absolutely floored to see him… and a few blue feathers laying by him. Right here in our residential neighborhood, where we all have approximately the same tiny-size cookie cutter lots!

My husband and I decided that since the hawk had already “done the damage,” we should just leave him alone – to avoid getting vultures in the yard later. Once the hawk was finished, he just stood there for quite a while. He looked like a different bird… He was so… “full” that he actually looked like he was shaped like a duck!

According to our trusty Bird’s of Texas Field Guide (by Stan Tekiela): “This hawk will come to feeders, hunting for unaware birds.” While he was standing there for such a long time, I was hoping that he wasn’t making a mental note of our address!

So it’s on with my winter/Christmas theme reading…

I enjoyed Marian Babson’s Twelve Deaths of Christmas so much, that I am now embarking on Marian Babson‘s Murder on a Mystery Tour. I should point out that Murder on a Mystery Tour is not a Christmas mystery book, but it is a winter theme book, which is helping to get me in more of an end-of-December mood. (We’re back to 70* days again…)

I have to admit that Marian Babson is an author who I tried reading years ago, and when I finished that particular book, I just couldn’t decide whether to continue reading her books, or not. Every once in a while, I read an author who I am just not that sure about, so I put him/her on the back burner for a while (in this case, a long while!) and try reading them again. Most of the time, when I try the author again, I still don’t like him/her. But, every once in a while my perseverance pays off.

I am delighted I REtried Marian Babson. I’m glad I kept her mystery books. She is now on my list of favorite authors!

I recently got a letter from a Cozy Mystery site reader who asked about the books in Barbara Cleverly‘s Laetitia Talbot Mystery Series. Why, she asked, did I have the WWI, archaeology-themed mysteries out of order?

Upon doing a little research, I found that the second mystery in the series was actually written before the first book in the series, so it makes it a prequel to the first book in the series… sort of like George Lucas’ Star Wars first three movies being followed by the prequel years. I mean, how can the 1977 Star Wars movie be part IV, when part I didn’t get released until 1999.

That got me thinking: If you were going to embark on reading a new-to-you author who had a prequel amongst the mysteries in the author’s series, would you cut to the chase (so to speak) and read the prequel mystery first, and then follow it with the rest of the books in their chronological order? OR Would you stick to the publication order and read the prequel wherever it falls in the series… as the publisher intended?

I have to admit that my obsessive compulsive disorder would totally dictate what I would do. There is no way I would be able to stop myself from reading the prequel before hitting the rest of the mysteries in the series.

What would you do?