I’m home! And I feel smarter now than I did before my trip! As I’ve mentioned before – my daughter moved to Cambridge to pursue her law degree.

I had a great time visiting a lot of really neat places. It really would be terrific to live on the east coast and have access to all sorts of historical places! We took a trolley tour and saw the highlights of Boston, and on our harbour tour we saw the USS Constitution. The trip to Salem was a real treat, as was our trip to Lexington and Concord. We saw such beautiful scenery AND after so many years of San Antonio’s lack-luster falls, the autumnal changing of colors was truly phenomenal.

My daughter rented a “Zip Car” twice, so we were also able to do a little shopping – for necessities, not clothes. We took advantage of her student status and went to Harvard’s Museum of Natural History, where we saw the most amazing glass flower collection imaginable. The flowers were made by a father/son duo (Leopold Blaschka and his son, Rudolph) – commissioned  for Harvard’s Botanical Museum in the late 18900s/early 1900s. Really impressive!!!

But of course, as a mom, my favorite event of the trip was seeing my daughter. I have missed her a lot and I have missed our weekly lunch dates when she attended the University of Texas at Austin. Some weeks the seventy five mile trip (one way!) felt long — but now I look back and feel like she was truly in our local “neighborhood” school.

I am currently on my first trip “out East” to visit my daughter at her new college. My husband went with her at the beginning of the year in order to help her get settled, and I decided to wait and let them do “all of the work” so that I could fly in and enjoy her first few days off from school. (She gets two days off for the Columbus Day holiday.)

A few years ago, my daughter and I took a bus tour which included two nights in Boston — which served to whet my appetite. I am really looking forward to seeing her AND to get the chance to check out the Cambridge/Boston area.

We will be visiting Salem, which I cannot wait to see. I am hooked on the History Channel documentaries (and the old, yesteryear A & E shows… Whoever came up with the slogan “new and improved” was NOT talking about what has happened to A & E!!!)) that cover the Salem Witch Trials. We are also going to take a day tour that will show us the highlights of Boston, Cambridge, and the surrounding area. That way we will be able to pick some of those highlighted places to explore on our own the next day.

(This trip I will have access to my daughter’s computer, so that will be one less thing my husband will have to “cover” for me.)

I have recently been “trying out” new authors, in hopes of finding a few authors who I can add to my “Favorite Authors” list. Unfortunately, I have hit a few snafoos… which has me going back and revisiting authors who I really like, but who I have (for some reason) put on a type of “hold.” These are authors whose books I own, and whose books are sitting on my TBR (To Be Read) bookshelves.

When I get recommendations from site readers I add the authors to my list of authors to post, and when I finally get to their names, I do some research and then make up their pages. A lot of the time there are authors who look like they will be really good matches for my taste in mystery books. So even though I am a very slow reader these days, I put those authors who truly look interesting (to me, that is!) on my “authors to try” short list. Unfortunately, some of the time I find an author or two who I simply cannot read. I know I have said this before, but if the author can’t grab my attention in (+/-) the first fifty pages, then I feel like it simply is NOT going to happen.

Anyway, I have decided that it is time for me to go with the “tried and true” authors (for me, that is!) so I will be reading three authors who I have really enjoyed in the past, but for some reason I haven’t read in a while: Susan Wittig Albert, Carola Dunn, and Monica Ferris. All three are authors who I started reading YEARS ago… All three are authors who I revisited throughout the years, but for some reason, never read their series all the way through. I wonder if the reason I never “caught up” with these authors is because I always wanted to have books in my TBR bookshelf that I knew I would enjoy.

Do you have authors who you have “saved for a rainy day?“ Author who you know will pull you into their novels and make you want to read, read, and read?