Horizontal Snow

Once, when I was in New York for the Book Prize announcement, I decided to stay in my hotel room for a morning.  I could see a snow storm out of my window.  The snow was blowing horizontally down the street.  This was too strange for a California Girl.  (That is, by the way, my name in Kansas.  I spent the whole time there experiencing weather I'd never seen before.  Carina said, "Come on, California Girl" as I carefully walked down a frozen driveway.)

Today Eric and I went to the Barnes and Noble to buy books with the generous gift cards given us by the Clancys.  We drove into the outdoor parking area in windy, but clear weather.  As we approached a parking place we were looking at a grey/white cloud blowing toward us.  Then we were pelted by horizontal snow.  It was blowing so hard I almost couldn't get out of the car.  I asked Eric if we could just stay in the car and let it blow past us.  But we couldn't see an end to it.  It was exhilarating walking to the store.  

I'm currently reading Outliers.  That's a very good book.  I'll write more about it when I finish in a few weeks (love paper books and the slowness of my reading.)  I bought two books - Loving Frank, about Frank Lloyd Wright and one of his wives, and Shadow Country, the winner of the National Book Prize.  I have several friends who have recommended the Wright book.  I seem to recall that the docent at Taliesin didn't like it, but she was in love with Frank herself.  This is what was written about Shadow Country when it won the prize:

Shadow Country is an epic of American rise and descent—poetic, mythic, devastating. From his Everglades trilogy Peter Matthiessen has coaxed a masterpiece, a wrenching story of familial, racial and environmental degradation stretching from the Civil War to the Great Depression. His E.J. Watson emerges through a dazzling array of voices as a singular figure in our national literature, the looming personification of manifest destiny within the dark reaches of our history.

Doesn't that sound interesting?  But I can only read one paper book at a time.  Outliers is an easy and interesting read.  Maybe it won't take that long to finish.

Christmas 2008

As I mentioned before, we drove from Virginia to Kansas for Christmas. One of the highlights was seeing the St. Louis Arch.  I'd seen it once before.  That was 43 years ago.  The arch is the same, so is the Mississippi.  The city seems to have grown up around it, though.  

Another highlight was the snow.  The

 first day in Kansas was slippery.  It 

snowed the night before Christmas. The snow was a little better than ice.  I felt like more like Peggy Fleming with the ice than I would like.  The mutt face on the right is Bailey.  She was my companion in the car.  Katie was in charge of walking her and giving her water and, well, taking care of her.  My job was to pet her.  We became fast friends.  She is now sleeping in my room.  Strange.

Life at the Clancys was great.  Mostly I cooked.  But Cindy was a cookie making storm.  She,

 Carina and Cael are making stained glass cookies.  Cael and his great-grandmother are helping.  


They also made haystacks, fudge and lemon cookies.  There were about 4 people in the house who should really have been allowed to eat any of that, but we ate a lot of them before we left.  The

dogs helped.  May I just say that using Google Chrome is not very compatible with Google's Blogspot?  I had a very cute picture of Carina up there and it kept getting deleted.  She has a lovely smile as well as a nice arm.  You will just have to believe me.

Carina and Sean have a dog named

 Henry who has long enough legs to see every new cookie added and he does not have any sense in knowing that they might be bad for him.  Why should he be different from the rest of us.  This is Henry with Caitlin and Eric.  

Sean's sister and her boyfriend swapped Christmas outfits with them. This is their elf clothes.   

I didn't get any pictures of my favorite thing to do.  Cael wanted to listen to my iPod ear buds, so I played Riki Tiki Tavi for him.  But it is hard for a 2.5 year old to just listen to a book, no pictures.  So I found the book on YouTube and we watched it about 5 times.  He loved that book.  It was more like watching a three part cartoon, but you could hear Kipling in there every now and again.  

Of course, my ear buds were out because I was listening to two books. I read The Private Patient, which was an Adam Dagliesh mystery and American Lion, an Andrew Jackson mystery.   Both were well-written.  I found PD James' writing a little more satisfying than Meacham's.  American Lion seemed a little stuck in the soap opera of the day.  I suppose that's because Jackson was stuck in that soap opera.  One of his cabinet members was with a woman before her husband died.  The women of the capital shunned her, but Jackson was a little sensitive about the topic.  His relationship with his beloved Rachel was probably consummated before her divorce.  Oh well.  We would never get all caught up in irrelevant things today, would we?  It seemed to take a lot of his energy and the focus of the book.  Then there was his unfortunate method of dealing with the Native American "issue."  I really wanted to like this guy, but many of his actions made that difficult.  Much better to like the murdered Private Patient.  She had her scar fixed at a private hospital, but did not live to see a scarless face.  I'm not spoiling anything, this is mentioned from the beginning.  She seemed to be very serene when she died, though.  Maybe if the early America of Andrew Jackson was just a little more serene.  

47

We are spending Christmas in snowy Kansas with Sean, Carina and Cael.  All grandparents and great-grandparents will be here too.  One of the exciting moments for me was spending the night in Kentucky on the way to Kansas.  This is my 47th state on the way to visiting all 50 states. Somewhere along the line, someone suggested they didn't count if you don't sleep in them.  That's pretty rude, changing the rules along the way.  I think there are only four that I haven't slept in that I have been in, so I'm not going to worry about them.  I just have Arkansas, New Hampshire and Vermont left.  Considering how cold it is around here, I think I'll wait until spring to visit New England.

   
Riding in a car gives you a lot of time to read.  1421 was very interesting.  The author appears to be an old British Navy submariner who got a bee in his bonnet about where the maps came from that European explorers used on their voyages of "discovery."  They refer to the maps often, so it is known that they existed before these guys felt one gust of wind in their sails.  The book is like a proof of the thesis.  He says something like, "It was said that this, this and this happened.  Well, we need to find proof of that."  And off he goes to some far off country looking for skeletons of ships or pottery or Chinese genes in the natives of the country.  The writing is very clear.  The proofs are believable. It was fun going on this voyage of discovery with Menzies.  And thereby reliving the voyages of those Chinese in their huge junks.

Even more enjoyable was listening to Sarah Vowell read her Wordy Shipmates. My sister was put off by her voice at first and I could certainly understand why.  Whine, whine, whine.  I'm sure she didn't mean to sound like a petulant 13 year old.  But she does.  Eventually you get used to it. Mixed in with her whines are amusing smart-ass comments and more than a little sarcasm.  Now, I really like that.  Not only that, she has other people reading the writing of  various Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Every now and then she throws in more modern references, like Ronald Reagan.  Reagan references John Winthrope's speech about the "city on the hill."  Reagan made it shiny and talked about it all the time, referring to the United States as a beacon to all those poor beknighted countries around the world.  Ms. Vowell is a little sceptical about adding shiny and the whole beacon thing.  I highly recommend this book to give one a better understanding of the Puritans and the period.     

I Can't Do It

I have been trying to read The Village for a while.  It doesn't help that it is paper.  We all know that I am a slow reader of paper things.  But this one is too hard.  For some reason I have been stuck in reading Viet Nam War memoirs.  When Tobias Wolff wrote about his experiences in Nam, he was more than a little self-deprecating.  His time in his village was an attempt to stay out of the line of fire.  That sounds like a great idea to me.  

Bing West's platoon got into the middle of everything.  His village was on top of a Viet Cong ant hill. I've just finished a chapter where many of the men were killed in a very daring VC attack.  No one can be trusted.  Nothing is light-hearted.  This is dirty, deadly war.  OK, I got it.  It is well written.  If it were not, I'd have stopped long ago.  

You have to understand that I have never seen a movie about Viet Nam.  I didn't want to see Platoon or Full Metal Jacket or The Killing Fields.  I didn't have to see it to know; I had friends who were killed and a husband who could not sleep at night without the radio on, he had to have noise to sleep.  Today I was loading my Ipod with music.  That's something new for me, but I have an 8 gb Ipod now, so there is room for music.  I always put Adagio for Strings on every computer I own, so I was looking for it for this download.  In the search, I found a spot on YouTube called Platoon Music Video.  It plays the full Adagio with scenes from Platoon.  That did it.  I'll keep the music, but I've had enough of that war.  Sorry, Bing, your book is good, but 2.5 books about Viet Nam is enough.

Escape

Why would a writer of minor courtroom dramas have a ghost writer?  I don't know Robert Tanenbaum from a bum on the street.  I can imagine Stephen King using a ghost writer; he is very well known and extremely prolific.  How does he write all that stuff?  But back to this, I see from Amazon that he has a new ghost writer.  I had liked the old ghost writer's books.  Whoa, I just looked on Wikipedia and see that Tanenbaum used to be mayor of Beverly Hills.  He used to write with his cousin and now he has other people to "help" him write.  Would all this matter if I had enjoyed this book more?  Probably not.

His protagonists are Butch Karp and Marlene Ciambi.  They used to just bicker with each other and solve cases brilliantly.  Now they are fighting terrorists.  This book, Escape, was pretty amusing because it keeps referring to recent books where they defeated everyone but the Nazis.  This time it is too similar to Extreme Measures in attempting to stop terrorists from blowing something big up and causing chaos in the Western World so some lunatic, power-hungry Saudi could take over the Entire World.  Diverting, but poorly written trash.

For all who are keeping score, I learned today that I am cancer-free in the middle regions of my body.  So that is really the Escape worth writing about.  

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Not me!  You may recall that my last book involved the torture of terrorists and my sensibilites.  Mrs. Dalloway was a relief.  Karen and I talked some time about this.  We both remember The Hours that came out a few years ago.  It is based on this story, itself and the writing of it.  What fun to listen to this day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway.  I've read a lot about the period and place - London just after WWI.  That and remembering the movie made this slice of life even more enjoyable.  It all takes place in one day, but each character relates what is happening in this day with other parts of their lives.  And no one was tortured.

Unlike me and all my friends at The Times and its ugly step-parent, the tribune company.  They declared bankrputcy.  What!!!  I am due to retire at the end of this month.  I should be okay, but then, the idiot Zell should not have brought us to this point.  Should.  "Seems, madam, nay it is, I know not seems."  First they decide not to offer Kaiser medical care to retirees after I just got a fabulous team of doctors to keep me healthy, then I wonder if they will try to screw me out of other benefits that I had expected.  All will be known soon, I imagine, but what that all is...?   I'm sure Clarissa would tell me to breathe.

Extreme Measures

This is a troubling book.  Extreme Measures is about the need of torture in this current battle with terrorists.  I don't know this Vince Flynn guy, but he sure comes from the right as far as condoning torture to get good information.  This flys in the face of what we read and what we sense by reading about Gitmo and rendition practices. 

Making the decision to brutally torture or not is easy in these books. You haul in people who obviously have the worst intent for the US.  It is known that they are through and through blackguards by our heros. Only foolish people would think it unwise to pop a shoulder out of a socket to get incriminating evidence or the key to the terrorist's plot.  

That is just a too, too simplified way of looking at this battle.  We don't usually know for sure that the people we pick up are villans and we surely don't know that torture will make them give us the information we need at the right time.  I could read the first 1/3 and the last 1/3 of the book.  It got a little preachy in the middle because of how detestable those liberals were.  

Do you think Mrs. Dalloway will get this tatse out of my mouth?  I do have to admit that I liked the bad guys getting killed in the end, so maybe Mrs. Dalloway will be too tame.

Tribune has declared bankruptcy.  No more paychecks from them.  Guess who I'll be calling tomorrow!

It's Winter!

It snowed last night.  Since Eric told me that snow rarely sticks here, I figured it would be gone by this morning.  But it is very cold out there.  It may not snow again for a while, but this snow is going to stay for a while.  

I am so happy it waited until Adrian left.  He does not like the cold one bit. Such a California boy.  The weather was beautiful while he was here. After getting of the first leg of his flight here in New York and hearing that it was 20 degrees outside, he was not looking forward to the cold.  But the weather turned warm - in the 50's most of the time he was here.  At Thanksgiving, Cael, Sean and Adrian went outside to play football.  Cael is delightfully all boy with the sweetest disposition.  He was always happy to be able to go outside to kick and throw the football.  Cindy got a little boy ball and a big boy ball.   He must have had trouble figuring out which he was.

We went to the Kennedy Center last Saturday to see Shear Madness.  A little silly, but had a lot of audience participation that was fun.  The Kennedy Center is, of course, awe-inspiring.  It's very grand and we will be 

going back there for New Year's Eve.  Isn't this a fun place to be?  On the left you will see us with JFK in the background.  He is looking very severe.  I don't remember that aspect of him.   

Maybe it was all that sitting.  I had a fever the next day and had to go to the ER.  It was an infection and I've been taking antibiotics ever since.  Once again, Cindy saved one of the Lundstrom kids.  She called my doctor and we agreed that I should go to the ER.  I wasn't too happy with the nurse, but Sandi shared her experience with blood-drawers and gave me a different perspective.  Okay, we'll let the nurse live. The good news is that I am feeling great, considering I had major surgery less than two weeks ago.

Yes, I've been reading.  I finished the second Civil War book.  The South is in dire straights.  They are considering changing the draft age, which was 18 to 45 to be lower and higher.  Grant has been found to be the hard driving General that Lincoln has been looking for.  Other generals on both

sides tend to hang back to make sure their positions are secure.  I 

will get the last book of  this series by Horton Foote a few days before Christmas.  

My friend, Marilyn, sent me a book from her book club.  This is The Giant's House.  The book on the left is the one she sent me.  The book on the right must be the paperback.  I like both covers because they tell a lot about the story.  The woman telling the story is a librarian.  She meets James, the giant, when he comes to her library.  He is a young man with a voracious need to read and learn about everything.  It started with magic and then roamed through most shelves of the library.  Another story line was how hard it was to keep this boy clothed and, particularly, shod.  I like the difference in the shoes on the right.  Adrian is no giant, but I can easily slip into his shoes when I was wearing my own shoes.  It looks like you could stuff a lot of shoes into James' shoes.  It is a lovely book.

Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

Today is a sad day in our house.  One of those two dogs who have lived here long before I got here, Sunshine, had to be euthanized today.  Put to sleep, put down.  So many euphanisms and no good way to say it.  Sunshine was very old.  She could not get up and down the stairs to go out to the yard to do her pooping.  She had trouble getting up from her resting position on your feet.  She sometimes was afraid to leave a piece of rug and venture toward her dinner bowl.  In other words, this was a necessary step.

The family is mourning her loss.  I'm glad she was here for Carina's family visit.  I'm glad that Cindy was in Ohio on her normal business travel.  Adrian helped Eric get her to the vet and I offered my ear and hugs to console Eric and Katie.  There was no Sunshine in any way today.

Getting Better

This isn't quite the vacation/retirement  I'd been planning, but it is probably most like the one we all get.  Tribune finally got it's act together and moved my medical plan to Northern Virginia.  So I visited all the doctors that Kaiser has.  It seems I'm very healthy except for one little thing.  And for this little thing, I had surgery on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  Very good day to do that.  It gives you a lot to be thankful for when Thanksgiving actually rolls around.  So, they worked on my body and I am looking pretty much like that drawing above.  Cute, no?  

Carina's family was here for Thanksgiving, so we had a 2.5 year old to keep things lively.  I'll download those pictures tomorrow.  And will tell more about their visit then.  I did get to read.  I finished the first third of the Civil War.  That got us to Shelbyville.  And now I've started the long road from Fredericksburg to Meridian.  Anyone who tells you that Lincoln's Team of Rivals always agreed on things is a liar.  Now I have to read that book again.  He was very good at managing a nest full of snakes.  I hope Obama is too, if that is the model he is following.
I also read a "new" Reacher book, One Shot.  Something light to keep my mind off the heaviness of battle and my body.  Only, I already read this book either on the cruise or at Maureen's.  That wasn't so bad.  When things aren't going quite right, it's always good to have a friend around.  At first I thought Child had recycled a plot.  My error.  

But speaking of having friends around, Adrian came out to spend Thanksgiving with me.  He was supposed to help me cook and travel around Virginia.  Instead, he stayed at the hospital most of one night and took me home the next day.  If I only had one shot at a great son, I guess I did pretty well.  I am one lucky woman.

Fine

Have I ever suggested that people should eat a balanced diet? Or read a balanced library? Well, we should do both. There is nothing better than finding a gem in a genre that you don't often read. Fine Just The Way It Is is a gem. Some may know Annie Proulx from Shipping News. I wasn't a huge fan of that book; it was just okay. Others may know her as the author of Brokeback Mountain. Actually, she was the author of Wyoming Tales. Brokeback was one of the short stories in this anthology. Fine is also known as Wyoming Tales, Part 3. This, too, is a compilation of short stories. They are as varied as my reading list. A couple are about the devil. Verry funny. And there is a lot of bleak sadness, because Wyoming gets to be like that. This was a wonderful book to read between my Civil War trek.

They did it. Tribune Company decided to pull the plug on my dear friends in India. I know I should be gleeful that, for the second time, these people saw the error of their ways and in-sourced work. But they didn't. The consolidated Helpdesk is now in Orlando. I see little difference in Orlando and Bangalore. I have friends in both places. As much as I have wished that the move to India would succeed, I wish the same for Orlando. But it still doesn't put us where we were. Instead of highly competent people who know our users well and know their issues well, we have people in other time zones determining our needs. Sorry for the we and our references. It's just easier. One of the problems with the tribune company is that they are really eight newspapers. Each set up their computer systems differently. They are trying to standardize, but maybe that project should have been completed before doing this. Where is the picture of me hiding my eyes and shaking my head?

We got a Wii! I have started to do the Wii Fit module. The most fun is the step aerobics. It is supposed to help you with your rhythm. For all of you who have seen me dance, this is quite a task. I promise that I will do that every day and may someday have better rhythm. In the mean time, I will be having a lot of fun with this system. Maybe some day I won't run over 75% of the flags in the downhill skiing. When that day comes, I may actually allow other people into the room while I do this. This is a picture of the hula hoop game. I am okay at this, but you need to move in a certain way to capture a floating hula hoop. This gives you a better score. Walking and chewing gum. Swiveling and moving your body to catch a hoop. Some of us are just not co-ordinated enough to do this.

Yet

What's Up?

Did you ever think you would live to see this day? A Democrat elected without the South dragging him down; a campaign that was brought to everyone, not just swinging people in swing states; a president-elect who thinks before he acts, thoughtfully thinks, not just assuming the "Thinker" pose as he acts out the process. I have truly died and gone to heaven. And what am I proudest of? That the voters of the United States finally understood what being a nation of immigrants means. "Your name is Barack Hussein? Well, that's nice, but what do you think, what do you want to do?" Who knows, some day we may actually elect a Muslim or a woman who is a lesbian. Who knows?

I have still been reading, but I have to say, watching CNN and MSNBC has become addictive. I've also been listening to a kagillion podcasts. Okay, only 3 of them ever get vaguely political, but I'm obsessed with keeping up. And I've been going to the doctor. Tribune finally got my benefits straight and moved to Northern Virginia. It was horrible. The worst was the inefficiency at The Times. It hurts when Tribune does a better job. So now I have new glasses to use when driving and watching MSNBC and I've been this close to getting my knee replaced. I need to see a different doctor. The one they sent me to just does sports injuries. I need the old arthritic lady doctor. Soon.

I decided to read about the Civil War while I am here. Who better than Shelby Foote? This is his three part narrative. When you listen, each of these three parts is in five sections of 6-8 hours each. That is about 100 hours. So far, I'm on the 4th part of the first book. Wow, this is interesting. I'd read Bruce Catton's books when I was here when Adrian was 6. Yes, a long time ago. So it's almost like new stuff. Who am I fooling, we all know this stuff like the back of our hand, right? Even if I did, this first book takes place in the area where I'm living now. Eric and I even visited Richmond, so all that fooling around the McClellan is doing in this book takes place in a location known to me. Very interesting.

Poor Abe Lincoln isn't held up as a hero here and that is good. He is just like all the rest of them, a man caught in a horrific circumstance, trying to do his best. At this point in the book, he is still kicking and screaming against universal emancipation. He wants those Southerners to come back. Ripping away their livelihood isn't the best way to entice them. Luckily, we all know this turns out well.

And, of course, I had to read another book inbetween sections of that long book. David Baldacci has a series of books that started with The Camel Club. Divine Justice is his latest in that series. This is so good. You could probably step into the middle of things and start with this book because he explains a lot about what went on before throughout this book. But I wouldn't do that. These are worth reading from the start. This one may be the fourth book. It has the appearance of being the last, but who knows. At one point in the book, it took on sort of a Jack Reacher vibe and I had trouble keeping track of who the protagonist was. They are both kind of super-hero, knock-you-dead-with-a-look kind of guys. And John Carr does some traveling in this one. But I got it all straightened out in time to really enjoy the end.

It's funny that this too takes place in my current neighborhood. Cool.

Fall

Have I said that it is beautiful here? The trees are slowly turning into all those fall colors we read about in California. Some do it slowly. I don't know any of the names of these trees. Is it the maple that slowly changes from green to orange? And what tree is it that all of a sudden, pfoomp, turns yellow?

Even my car is happy to have soft deciduous leaves covering its windshield wipers instead of pine needles and oak leaves. They were never this pretty. And thinking about those live oak leaves, these leaves are easier to walk on bare-footed.

Another sign of Fall is baseball. I celebrated the baseball playoffs by reading the book Faithful by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King. It was written during the 2004 baseball season. These two authors and old friends decided to keep journals about every game the Boston Red Sox played that year. The Red Sox hadn't won a World Series since early in the last century. Their book was based on the premise of how faithful the fans remain despite never winning the big one.

Of course the book is well written and it has the wonderful ending of the curse being broken. (No spoiler alert needed, unless you really don't like baseball. And then you won't care.) One of the things that I've come away with is that these guys play way too many games. The season starts in cold weather and may end on Halloween. We got to watch the players play for several innings in the rain in the final game this year. We all like to make a lot of money, but I think the TV stations, team owners and players need to get a grip. Too much, guys.

In any event, Faithful takes you into the minds of guys who wouldn't mind if the season was longer. What do I know?

Audible Kids

Last week I listened to Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned. This is the second book written by Fitzgerald, just before The Great Gatsby. It was 1922. It seems like the book is autobiographical, but it was written when he was a young man. The hero of the story, Anthony Patch, seemed to foreshadow Fitzgerald's later life. Drink and lack of purpose pulled Anthony and his wife Gloria down a dismal path, just as it did for Scott and Zelda.

I enjoyed the book, but found the last part, his slide to utter despair, was hard to read. I have to admit that I skipped an hour or two, after I could see that there was little hope for Anthony. But it was still interesting enough to recommend.

It was strange to hear, once again, that this was an Audible Kids book. First the vampire romance and now a story of dissipation and despair. Maybe I'm wrong about what kids read. Or maybe this book is assigned by a lot of high school teachers. I think I would assign it. There are surely a lot of parallels to our current lives.

See that picture on the left? It is an artery that is filled with plaque. Euuuwwwww. Eric went in for an angiogram on Tuesday and they found one of his arteries was 99% blocked. So they put a stint in. That cleared up the plaque instantly. We have all been eating more healthfully since then.

He had been complaining about chest pains when exercising. Cindy found a doctor who would not just wave a yada yada wand over him but would do some intrusive snooping. But before his scheduled angiogram appointment on election day, he went to lunch with me. I thought he was having a heart attack. He said it was just bad food. Once I told Cindy, he was whisked to the hospital and the procedure was done the next day. I keep looking at that picture. No more cheese. Sigh.

We went to watch a few horse races on Saturday. This was an absolutely gorgeous Fall day. The air was chilly, the clouds were drifty. I packed cheese, crackers, fruit and wine. Eric bought some new fun folding chairs. Do you see the foot rests attached to the chairs? Very cute, but very hard for me to climb over. Most of the horses did better than that on the jumps.

The clouds were as much fun to watch as the horses. This was a steeplechase. The horses ran right in front of our picnic spot. They even started there for a couple of races. It was really a great day for cloud, horse and people-watching.

Connelly

Don't tell anyone that today is so quiet at Booz Allen that I can write about the book I finished on the way to work this morning. I just love Michael Connelly. He was once a reporter at The Times and I can still picture him sitting at his desk in the Valley news room. Little did we know that he was just there to gather plots for his crime novels. He was a good reporter and an even better author. I have seen him every year at the Festival of Books and Karen and I got to watch him chat with Joseph Wambaugh about their new books.

This is the new book. Connelly has a much loved series about Harry Bosch, snarly police detective. He had also written a book called The Lincoln Lawyer about a lawyer who does all his work out of a fleet of Lincoln cars. These two meet in The Brass Verdict. Does it matter what the plot is? Let's just say that it holds together nicely. More to the point, it's fun to read about all the locations this book takes place in and around. He even writes about the new police center across the street from The Times, the one I loved to watch being built.

So, once again Connelly's plotting is good, accuracy is good, objectivity is good (how scummy does one feel, being a defense lawyer?) and character develop is good. All that work as a crime reporter seems to have paid off.

Eric and I had an interesting discussion about how we see these characters. He thinks Bosch looks like Belker from Hill Street Blues. I see him as being taller and less wiry. I don't know if that's because Len Cariou reads those books for Audible and that's how he looks. Eric thinks Mickey Haller - the Lincoln lawyer - looks like Tom Selleck. I'm thinking smaller, but not too smaller. Maybe Jon Hamm from Mad Men. He looks conflicted enough to be Haller. And he could certainly be a defense lawyer doubting his chosen profession. What do you think?

$2.60; 55; $158.50

Gasoline prices are sinking faster than my spirits. Can you believe $2.60 a gallon? I remember being thrilled with $3.80 is Wyoming in June. That's a savings of $15.00 when I fill my tank. My current question is, how many times to I have to fill my tank to save the money I spent paying for my speeding ticket.

Yes, a speeding ticket. One of the reasons we got good gas mileage on our trip across country was that we kept our speed down. That is just one of the many lessons I forgot after the trip. I was taking Natalie to Dulles Airport and was pulled over for speeding, going 74 instead of 55. This is me, looking devastated. But you will notice that the driver's side window is down.

This was just the last hit ($158.50) on my pocket book after getting the window fixed, two new tires and the thermostat fixed. Oh, and the new Ipod after my old one starting playing the wrong songs. I decided, none-the-less, to drive up to Vermont for the week. But as my luck would have it, I got lost. I will remember to take two maps next time. Karen tried to teach me that, but I failed to learn that lesson. I had a nice drive and ate some crabs in Baltimore. The good part is, I saved money on my motel rooms. I am going to have to work a lot of days to make up for this very expensive month. Or buy a lot of gas.

A New Hamlet

I just had to read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. After all, Oprah recommended it. I didn't know that when I bought it, but she was right for a change. It wasn't at all cloying. It is a retelling of Hamlet. So you know the whole thing, right? Ghost of the father, mother marries brother-in-law who killed the father, Hamlet kills father of his best friend, he is sent away to be killed, and everyone dies in the end. All those things don't happen, but a lot of them do. When the ghost of his father appeared, I almost stopped reading. I didn't know about the Hamlet angle. I'd been enjoying the story on its own until that moment. Edgar is a beautiful young man who can't speak. He and his family adapt. They raise dogs for a living. Edgar has a special affinity for the dogs. I loved reading about how he works with and trains the dogs. I also liked his relationship with his mother and father.

Oh, should I mention the play? That part is too cool. After all, the play is the thing, where we capture the conscience of the king. And how it is done in this book is clever. I don't think there is a Player King. Some other parts are either missing or too obscure for me to catch. My favs, Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, may be a couple of puppies, but I don't see it. It really doesn't matter. You may enjoy the story without knowing Hamlet, but I think it adds a layer of interest that I would miss.



I've also re-read the Ramayana. This is a story about the Hindu God, Rama. I read it in college and wanted to read it again after my time in India. Now I need to find my old college book to help me interpret the book. The Demon King takes Rama's wife, Sita, to Lanka. It is so clearly Sri Lanka in my mind, but I can't be sure. I know there is much more to the story than the version I listened to, but it was good to revisit the tale. Remember this, my friends in India, you are never far from my mind.

le carre

Nobody writes like le Carre'. His books are slow and detailed. His characters have a depth you don't often find in this genre. And he always makes his subtle point. International drug companies or the threat of Islamic extremists. Or the threat of our defenders on all things Islamic. The book takes place in Hamburg, a place that le Carre knows well. He was assigned there by the British Secret Service until he was outted by Kim Philby. Even though that was ages ago, he stays current on the issues confronting us today. I'd say this is a must read, but you have to be willing to accept a slow revealing.

And now just a little note about a wonderful dish I made last night. Sauteed chicken legs, then onions, shallot, and garlic. Deglazed with cider vinegar, then added cider and chicken stock and a cinnamon stick. Cooked for half an hour and added butternut squash and an apple. Wowser. Cindy said it was like autumn. Yep. We had it with the last of the summer corn from the farmer's market. In fact, almost everything was from the farmer's market.

Surprise Visitor

I love my family.

My dear nephew, Kevin, was wily enough to bring a princess into the family, a princess and her queen mother. Okay, so Natalie will never accept Maggie/Margaret as a princess. (But she is wearing a crown in this picture.)

Natalie was in town this weekend to attend her 5th high school reunion, or one of those numbers. I was in the car with Eric and Cindy, going to see the new DiCaprio movie when she called and said she just had a little time in her crammed schedule for a visit. I almost leapt out of the car. Tsk. It was great to see her. And Eric and Cindy had a date without a third wheel. It was an excellent compromise.

Beau Geste

Long ago, before July 2004, I rented books through Books on Tape. They would send me boxes of tapes or Cd's, I would listen and share with my friend Tom, then one of us would send the tapes back in those boxes. It was perfect for me. I never owned any books that I had to shelve or take to Goodwill. But then they went out of the book leasing business. They directed us to Audible.

With Audible, you buy the digital book that is downloaded to your computer. You can listen at your computer or create your own Cd's. Or you can do what I did at that time. I bought an IPod Nano and started my downloading career. In four years I have read hundreds of books. I was just looking at my Audible Library. There are 669 items or segments. A few books have six segments. A few books have only one segment. All of those segments have been loaded on my little Nano which is then stuffed into my pocket or attached to my car's tape deck. But on Monday, I began to sense a disturbance in my life force. The Nano was playing the wrong book when I clicked on an item. Then it thought it was always being recharged when it never was being recharged. When I did recharge it, it wasn't healthy enough to take more than a sip of the current. So, while I was at work on Wednesday, I ordered a replacement. The old Nano still doesn't know that it is about to be decommissioned. The new one is smaller and cuter. Isn't that always the way.

The last book that I read on the old Nano was Beau Geste. In a beautiful gesture, it worked hard to let me finish it, even though it thought I was reading The Portrait of a Lady. Geste was made into a movie with Gary Cooper as the beautiful Michael Geste. There are no pictures of the book. I think it must be out of print. The book was written in 1924 by P.C. Wren. Wren says that he was once in the French Foreign Legion, but there no record of that. What he did do was spend a great deal of time in the part of India that is now Pakistan. He certainly knew a more exotic life than most Englishmen of his time.

Most of the book takes place in England. Three brothers are caught up in the theft of a blue jewel, stolen from their beloved benefactor. All three flee to the foreign legion and Saharan Africa. It starts as a mystery and the mystery is only resolved in the last few pages. The book is well written and I enjoyed most of it. The commandant of the fort they are assigned to is dreadfully cruel. I find it very hard to listen to brutality, even when written by a genteel Englishman. Skipping ahead is difficult when you can't see the words on the page. But the volume control still worked okay on the old Nano, so I could enjoy the book.

My new Nano arrives today. It is 8gb instead of 2gb. I may get to put all my podcasts and music on the Nano with my 11 books. Yippee. This is all good, because next Thursday I am going to Vermont and New Hampshire. I'm going alone, so there will be a need for lots of stuff to listen to.