Friends Without End

Friends from the HelpDesk and the Editorial Systems group meet once a month at some restaurant somewhere to talk about old times and old Times. This month we had a large group at a very noisy restaurant. They are Tom, Dean, me, Jim, Jackson and John. Even though we couldn't hear each other very well, we had a good time. We could have stayed all night, but Dean, John and Tom started to talk about bands and I saw Jim's eyes glaze over. I guess we had beaten the new dead horse, the recently departed editor at The Times, to death; although it seems that the Publisher had already done that. It just gets more exciting. I'm always happy to be included in the group. They obviously needed a female presence. I hadn't seen Jackson since before he left The Times a few years ago. He and I were first to arrive. I walked up and sat next to him. I'm sure he thought he was being picked up. Maybe next time.

I finally finished the puzzle. See how it's almost totally sky? Maybe not totally, but it sure seemed like it. The picture on the right shows the extra piece that was in the box. Just below that is the empty spot, missing the piece it replaced. Just an added challenge, I guess.

When I was at the movie on Friday with Maggie, I found incense sticks. My sandalwood carved elephant is really an incense holder. I didn't know that when I bought it or I would have bought incense at the same time. I was lucky to find some. I got sandalwood. That is chandan in Hindi (I suppose.) My dear friend in India is also Chandan. Now I think of him when it burns.

I've been reading World Without End. Poor Adrian gets to listen with me, since I'm listening from my computer, not my Ipod. He asked what the time period for the book was, so I looked it up in Amazon. Then I started to read reviews. One was irate that the dialog was so current and that the women were quite liberated for the age. Adrian couldn't agree more. He thought it was pretty silly. Then I read another review that complained about the gratuitus sex scenes. I agreed, they were all pretty juvenile and I do mean all, because there are many. I felt like I was reading a current book about pre-teen angst. In other words, I hadn't been enjoying the book but couldn't put my finger on why. So I decided to finish the first section (there are 6!) to see if it got better. But it became apparent that the reviews and Adrian were right. One review called it a Book Without End. It was wrong. This book has ended. Too bad. That's got a pretty cover.