Hashbrowns, a hedgehog, a hamster

and a dragon taking a break

I took my birthday week, mostly offline, to read printed books and have a slow quiet week. At the beginning of my birthday time I drew my hope for the week in the form of a hedgehog reading in my sketchbook.

My wife

J. L. Sullens

asked me what I wanted to eat for my birthday and I replied “Hashbrowns!”. She knows I want books as gifts so that question doesn't even need to be asked. 🤣

So, birthday morning, we went to a local cafe, Joe Brown's, that has been in business since 1932. Here's a photo of the birthday person, me 😁, and a view of the wonderfully bustling cafe behind me.

The coffee was excellent and the homemade hashbrowns were a birthday wish come true!

Afterwards we walked around a bit downtown - I brought my walking pole- to see the sights and let the uncharacteristically big breakfast settle some. When we got home one of our dear friends had left me some birthday flowers! Here's how pleasant they looked on top of one of our bookshelves.

Of course the next morning during breakfast at home, our usual sensible fruit plate and croissant breakfast, I drew the flowers with my gouache paints and ink.

Later, during a break from reading printed books one of the birthday flowers reappeared in my sketchbook.

Mostly my birthday week looked alot like this:

I read these three fiction novels and I highly recommend all of them if you want some “reading to cheer up and hope by" aka hopepunk genre titles.

Books Clancy read during birthday week

And I'm still reading this wonderful oh-my-gosh-I-have-a-new-favorite-author title that's also in the hopepunk genre … 💚💚💚💚👇

But of course my birthday week wasn't a completely adulting-free week nor was it as slow or as quiet as I'd hoped. Even so I'm grateful for the delightful break I did get!

During a very brief peek online I saw this relevant meme….

… which inspired this coffee circle painting of a hamster.

Thank you all for celebrating my birthday with me!! Here's a surprise gift for you of 20% off of my published sketchbook “A.M. Sketching” July 12th through the 14th just use the code BOOKWORM20 at checkout. (click here to preview my sketchbook for free.)

I hope you'll be having some of your own essential soul satisfying fun¹ this weekend!

Onward ever…

💚💚 Thank you, to all of you, for your ongoing patronage and support of my work! I appreciate every one of you! If you're a newly paid subscriber please feel free to download any or all of the 17 ebooks that I've written and illustrated which you can download and access anytime you wish from this index page.
Thank you again for being here!! 💚💚

1. Maybe you need to have more fun