A: All Together Now

Let Blogging A to Z 2025 begin! My theme this year is Novelty Songs. For Day One, I present:

All Together Now

Written primarily by Paul McCartney (but credited to Lennon and McCartney), "All Together Now" was recorded during the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour period, but not released until it was included on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.  

From Wikipedia:

McCartney described the song as a children's sing-along with the title phrase inspired by the music hall tradition of asking the audience to join in. He also described a "subcurrent" in the song, a dual-meaning where "we are all together now". According to music critic Tom Maginnis of AllMusic, McCartney created the song "to match the same light-hearted spirit" of "Yellow Submarine."

"All Together Now" appears in an animated sequence in the film Yellow Submarine, and is also introduced by the Beatles themselves in a final live-action scene of the film. During the latter scene, translations of "All Together Now" into various languages appear written on-screen.

 While searching Youtube, I came across this children's version of the song:

 

Thursday 13: Letter Fun

Colleen at The Thursday 13 holds a weekly blogging prompt where bloggers make a list of 13 things on Thursdays. The topic is for you to choose. The blog host doesn't have any official graphics to display on the Thursday 13 posts, so I decided to whip one up myself. 🙂   

Here is some alphabet humor in anticipation of the A to Z Blogging challenge which is just days away. Hope you'll join me then!

Looking Into Next Month

 

Just a little over a week until the alphabet madness begins. The official sign-ups begin this week. As soon as I revealed my theme two weeks ago, I then began drafting my posts. They are now scheduled for each of their designated letter days. Yes, I have a whole month of posts scheduled. I've only been using schedule-posting since last year's A to Z, but I didn't begin it then until the fifth day, though all my posts had been drafted a month earlier. 

I'm not sure who many more posts I'll be doing this month. I have a Thursday 13 scheduled for this week that ties in with the A to Z. Whether I'm going to do Thursday 13 in April remains to be seen. If I do, it will be done either the day of, or scheduled a day or so beforehand. If not, I'll be back in May. I'm trying to limit my non-A to Z posts to Sundays, since we are off then. I hope to get in a Book Blog Discussion post on one of the Sundays, and will be posting my Reading Bingo card for April on the first Sunday. Any other Sunday posts, if any, will be determined. This is how I did it last April. 

And I'm not certain how many more posts I'll get in for the rest of March. I'm a little worn-out from preparing my A to Z posts that I'm not sure what else to post. I had to get in a Book Blog Discussion post for this month. I try to do at least one a month. As I said, I have already scheduled a post for Thursday 13 this week. 

It's going to be a fun month of letter madness.

Book Discussion: How Quickly Do You Read New Purchases?

 

As I said earlier, I made my first purchase at the new bookstore in my hometown. I have yet to read the book and am uncertain when I will. Though I really hope to get it this year. So many times when I have bought a book (new or used), I most often put it aside to be read later--never knowing when that "later" will be.  Some have been sitting in my house for who-knows-how-long and I still wonder when I'll ever get to some of them, or why I haven't read them yet. 

But  there was one book I got earlier this year at Barnes & Noble that I recently read. I got the book in January and read it at the end of February. And earlier this month when I found this book at Goodwill, I read it right away. I was looking for a book set in the 1920s and was unaware at first that this is set then. Also, I had been wanting to find this book for a while.

How long do you often take to read a newly purchased book, whether it's new or used?

Toilet Paper Memories: Thursday 13

Colleen at The Thursday 13 holds a weekly blogging prompt where bloggers make a list of 13 things on Thursdays. The topic is for you to choose. The blog host doesn't have any official graphics to display on the Thursday 13 posts, so I decided to whip one up myself. 🙂  

After getting a new pack of toilet paper the other day (my cousin got it from Costco), I got to thinking about the toilet paper shortage that happened at the start of the pandemic. I still wonder why people though it was necessary to hoard TP.  And several reminders came up on my Facebook memories this week. 

Drafting A to Z Posts

 

All last week I began drafting my posts for the A to Z. I wanted to get an early start so I can have time to look them over, which I already have been doing! They re currently in the draft folder, and once I get them polished up, I will schedule each for its designated letter day. I'm trying to decide how early to post each one. I will post each one in early in the morning, so it will live before I get up (which may be the case in most instances). For last year's A to Z, I did not begin the schedule-posting until the fifth day. It worked so well for such an event. I was glad to have learned about it a month or so earlier so that I could schedule-post on the day of a medical exam I had last April (some of you may already know about this). 

I'll be squeezing in as many posts as I can for the rest of this month, while awaiting the A to Z madness. By scheduling my posts, I should have more time to view and comment on other people's posts. I'm always excited to see what other come up with. The theme reveal (which is optional) closed yesterday, and the official signups begin next week. 

Thursday 13: Some Favorite Past A to Z Postings

Colleen at The Thursday 13 holds a weekly blogging prompt where bloggers make a list of 13 things on Thursdays. The topic is for you to choose. The blog host doesn't have any official graphics to display on the Thursday 13 posts, so I decided to whip one up myself. 🙂  

After posting my theme reveal for A to Z Blogging 2025 this past Sunday, I immediately began drafting my posts. I got to thinking about some of my previous A to Z challenges. Here are some of my favorite posts from previous challenges. I've only been doing it since 2021, even though the event has been around since 2010. I was still new to blogging then and wasn't aware of the A to Z until around 2014 until I saw it on a now-defunct blog  that I read regularly. I spent years looking at blogs of others who participated and wondered if I'd ever be one of them. I finally decided to take the plunge. This year will be my fifth.

Click here to learn more about the A to Z, if you don't already know.

My past themes:

2021: Life During 2020

2022: Forgotten TV Shows

2023: Childhood Memories

2024: Barbie

1. 2021  Toilet Paper, Telephone appointments, Twitter, Texting, Trump Hating, Tok Tok, Tiger King. Now: no more phone appointment at Behavioral Health, but still meeting via Zoom. And another new doctor. And I won't get started on the Citrus Clown being back in office. It feels like we've stepped back in time! Haven't given up on Twitter since it became X under the Perfume Man; been on too long to want to leave. But I'm also at Bluesky now. And it's been five years since the day toilet paper began disappearing from store shelves. I can still see this in my mind. 
2. 2022: Angie. I wasn't too surprised that no one seemed to remember this show. Some knew the theme song, which was a Top 40 hit.
3. 2023 R for... How many of these do you remember? Did any one have a Rubik's Cube, whether is was the actual cube or a generic knockoff, or the mail-in offer from Chex Cereal shown in this post?
4. 2024 S: Shani  Not many people seem to remember this sister-line to Barbie. I was in my 20s when this came out, thus was past toy age. Had I been younger when it came out, I would have wanted it. 
5. 2023: T for... Who remembers reading teen romances, mainly those shown in this post? And Top 40 countdowns? I'm sure more than one of you had a Twinkie at some point in time :)
6. 2024: M: Midge I was surprised to learn how many people barely learned about Midge from the movie. I knew about Midge's Happy Family line when it came out in 2002, and I won't even say how old I was then! 
7. 2022: C: The Cross-Wits I was not too surprised about the reactions to this one. No one seemed to remember this game show. I've asked people I know who are older than I am, and none of them seem to remember either. Just how did the first run of this show last five years with almost no one remembering it?
8. 2023: L for... Did you have a favorite lunch box in grade school? Remember the library card catalogs? So few I've asked in person seem to remember Live Aid (this summer will be the 40th anniversary), and no one commented on that part of this post. One person, however, mentioned loving Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats (Geldof was organizer of the big benefit concert).
9. 2021: C: Cooking, Cleaning, Corona, CNN Here we are five years later. No more watching CNN in my house; it's now MSNBC. Not a lot of fancy cooking recently (I don't seem to have a lot of energy!) A lot of cleaning currently happening at home. Still hearing about the Coronavirus five years after the beginning of the pandemic shutdown.
10. 2022: H: Harper Valley PTA Again, I was not surprised that very few people, if any, remembered this show. Many did remember the hit song on which the show was based, however. I expected that.
11. 2021" X: X Titles, eXhausted, Drawing an X  Right now, I'm feeling a little exhausted because of the time change and the gloomy, rainy weather we've been having in my neck of the woods. It's expected to last until Saturday, then start again next week! And finding a title for X is as challenging as ever. I still need a book title and author name for Alphabet Soup reading challenges this year. And of course, a title for this year's A to Z blogging.
12. 2024: A: Alan Many did not know about Alan until the movie. 
13. 2022: Z:Zoom The PBS kids' show from the 1970s. Only a few seemed to remember this. It came up on Facebook in 2020, when people began using Zoom, the meeting app, at the start of the shutdown. Zoom (the app) and came up during A to Z 2021, along with Zoom (the show).