(no subject)

Haven't posted for a while. I decided to use the time when I might have been posting to work on things in the real world. For the most part the experiment was successful. I worked on chainmail, read, and did other little, less virtual, things.

I think the only one that missed the inane ramblings that are my almost daily posts was... me. I missed the act of writing, of finding some interesting tidbit to comment on or something. I've never been much of a diarist. I think most of what I write would be a waste of paper. But no trees need to be sacrificed here. It's all just imaginary writing and, as bravecows wisely observed, imaginary people.

On to mundane. If mundanity be the food of life, write on.

I was sick with a nasty nasal thing last weekend and the early part of this week. It was the standard drag that viruses generally are.

But today has been a great day. I got my year end bonus check at work, got out at noon, went to the bookstore, went out for food and drinks with derien.

Today's haul:
The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts, by Douglas Adams
Gray's New Manual of Botany, by Dr. Asa Gray
A Field Guide to Animal Tracks, by Olaus J. Murie
Raj, the Making and Unmaking of British India, by Lawrence James

The last one there could double as a weapon or a step stool if you need to reach a high cupboard.

The van is nearly done. We may be able to get it back next weekend. I'm psyched to see it all new and shiny. Doe is psyched to have two cars again.

The birds have been wonderful in the mornings. They sing to the sunshine and it brings me up to step out into the warm morning and hear their songs.

Oh, and lucylou posted another song.

reading (Walden)

I finished Walden last weekend. It wasn't at all what I expected from the bits I'd heard about it, but then again I didn't know what to expect.

I have garnered a nice little collection of pithy quotes and I don't think I even scratched the surface of potential quotes to save. Thoreau amazes me by how he can be so economical in thought and word in places and so much a typical philosopher in others. For a few pages there would be this incredible concise, witty, curmudgeon talking to me. Then I'd spend five pages wading in Walden's cold spring waters with my nuggets freezing off, wondering when we're going to come back to shore. Thoreau brings up many valid economic and philosophical points. But sometimes his prejudices (it's not smarter just because it's written in Greek and it's not more holy just because it's from the East) wear thin as does the axe he has ground for a bit too long.

His descriptions of the woods, animals, and water take me back to the woods myself. Does he manage to capture that for those who've never witnessed the four seasons in New England? I don't know. Reading Walden has definitely given me the itch to get back out into New England again. He may not be a poet, but he loved his woods.

9. Henry David Thoreau "Walden"