Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week. The Friday 5ive took a few weeks off because we finally made a trip to our home in Florida after 15 months.
1) Every time I see the calming blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, I feel so peaceful. It was great to walk along the beach every morning, feel the warm water and sand between my toes. 
2) We had lunch with friends at Columbia restaurant, where our server was an amusing gentleman named Norbert, who put on quite a show as he prepared our sangria and Columbia 1905 salads tableside. 
3) I made a new recipe this week- Joy Bauer's made a healthier Egg Roll Bowl on the Today Show. It was delicious, made with ground turkey, cabbage, chopped mushrooms, and soy sauce, rice vinegar and a homemade duck sauce. We loved it and it moves into regular dinner rotation. 
4) I finished another virtual bike race- 750 miles from Boston to Bar Harbor. The t-shirt for this one is so soft, I think it will be a favorite for awhile. 
5) I finished nine books in the two weeks we were away and there were a few standouts.
Chris Whitaker's novel We Begin At The End had me gasping out loud at a few points. Walk is the chief of police of a small tourist town. When he was a teenager, he testified against his best friend Vince in the hit and run case where a young girl was killed. Thirty years later, Vince is released from prison. Star, the sister of the young girl killed, was Vince's girlfriend. She now has a teenage daughter, Duchess Day Radley, who fancies herself an outlaw, and cares for her younger brother Robin, and Star, who is an alcoholic and can't hold a steady job. All these lives collide in ways that bring more misery to everyone. It's a remarkable story about the family you're born with and the one you create. It's a powerfully emotional novel. 
Beatriz Williams' spy novel, Our Woman in Moscow, takes place at the beginning of the Cold War. Iris Digby's husband is accused of being a Russian spy, and her family defects to Moscow. When she sends her estranged twin sister Ruth a postcard asking her to come to Moscow to help her when she gives birth to her fourth child, FBI agent Sumner Fox convinces Ruth to help him extract Iris from Russia. It's a real page turner, with twists and turns you don't expect. 
I hope you all have an enjoyable and safe Memorial Day weekend.
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