Challenge met!

I used to be a voracious reader. As a kid, I once set fire to bathrobe and blanket I'd draped over a plastic mushroom lamp in my bedroom (yes, it was the '70's) so that I could secretly read late into the night.  I had a hard time explaining the melted lamp the next day. After that, I took to lying on the floor reading by the tiny bit of light coming in under the door from the hallway. In high school, I made my way down the hallways between classes reading a book as I walked, and then tried to read surreptitiously under the desk. When I had my first baby, I'd sit in an armchair for hours holding a book off to whichever side he wasn't nursing on at the moment. Later, when I was reading the Harry Potter series to my boys, I discovered I could read one page aloud while silently reading ahead on the opposite page. Occasionally, when something bad was coming up on the next page, I'd say, "Oh no!" and the kids would yell, "Mom, don't do that!"

But in recent years, I'd stopped reading much just for fun. Life got in the way - the pressures of running a household on my own with the endless projects required by purchasing an old house, managing a private practice, various relationships. But at the beginning of this year, my sister called my attention to the Goodreads website where you could challenge yourself to read a certain number of books in a year's time. I set a goal of a couple of books a month and started reading. By July, I was well ahead of schedule, and bumped the 24 up to 36. A couple of days ago, I finished the last book, with half a month to spare.

I'm taking a book break for the last bit of 2012, before I start the 2013 challenge. In the meantime, I'm plowing my way through a stack of New Yorker magazines I brought home from the office. There were a dozen or so from 2009 and 2010, and tonight, I start in on the 2011 pile. I just read the parts that interest me - articles on biosynthetics, the oddly conservative founder of Whole Foods, cryonics, building safe cooking stoves for impoverished African countries, changes in the cookbook industry, the problem of intersexed athletes, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, rising health care costs, Michelin guide restaurant inspectors.  So much to read, so little time!

It never hurts to pause a moment...

12:12 12-12-12.  Wish for peace.

Dinner with friends, part 2.

And yet another friend offered to make me dinner the other night.

His house is in a very rural area, with a herd of cows watching from the next field.

Before dinner we took a short hike along the lake. The forecast had called for rain, but fortunately it stayed clear.

The trail follows the curving shoreline. He runs about 15 miles at a time and much faster than I do, so hiking seemed like a better bet for me.

It was too close to the day's end to walk long, so we headed back before it could get dark. Besides, I was hungry. Shrimp and pesto fettuccine, bread, plenty of malbec. Not too bad and it was nice to have someone cooking for me.

Dinner with friends, part 1.

I had a social sort of few days.  One night, I made dinner for a friend's birthday - lemon shrimp pasta, salad, bread and coeur a la creme with raspberries and chocolate stars for dessert.  I had a heck of a time making the candle stand up in the cream on her plate, but what's a birthday without it?

Another night and another friend had me heading downtown.  From Thanksgiving through New Year's, I think, there's a covered ice rink on the walking mall, and lights everywhere. I had time to kill, so I looked in the little stores and took pictures.

When I stopped in front of this pub, a man sitting at one of the tables outside smiled at me and said, "That's right, this is the place!"  I should have let him buy me a beer.

On the other side of the square, a man was caught up in the holiday spirit and danced to Christmas music on a boom box. Some of the ice skating kids had stopped and were watching him twirl in his strapless scarlet dress.

We ate outdoors. It was a beautiful night - never even warm enough to put on the jacket I'd brought with me. I got fish tacos and a piece of cheesecake. My friend and I split a bottle of a red zin-syrah blend and talked until they were shutting down. She and I seem to close places down when we meet - we never run out of things to talk about.

Lately, we've been getting perfect running weather.

One rainy day a while back, I hit the gym early and hopped on a treadmill.  I was in a running mood, so I plugged into my music and turned the speed up, and ran for 50 minutes. A couple of treadmills down was an older woman. I overheard her say to the man next to her, "Why is she doing that? Doesn't she know it's easier if you walk?"

When the weather cooperates, though, I much prefer running and walking outside. Generally, I go out to the lake.  I often run first along the road that skirts the water, including that first stretch of park at the bottom, and then out along the dam. Round two is along that squiggly path through woods and hayfields. I wish there was more of that dirt path to run, instead of so much pavement.

I use a running app on my phone, which announces at five minute intervals my distance and pace. Usually 3 or so miles, but last Sunday I managed 5.3 miles. I had been running a nice steady almost 12-minute mile (I know, I'm slow), but the last half mile I felt like I was running through mud, and my pace bogged way down, too, until I just quit. Still, this is my new record for distance, so I'm feeling pretty good about it.  And I'm enjoying it, which is the main goal.

Also? It allows me to have a dinner like this without thinking twice about it.

Children of the cotton.

Heading south to Georgia, I know I'm getting close when I see the cotton growing. When I was a kid and working in a fast food place, people would come in after a shift at the mill with bits of cotton in their hair.

From a distance, it sometimes looks as if there has been a dusting of snow. I always like seeing the cotton fields. It feels like home to me.

But this picture that was in the paper Thanksgiving day? That's just creepy to me.

When computer gods are frowning.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone this morning with Gloria, the friendly tech support person at AT&T.  We have DSL internet there, and lately I've had to reboot the modem and router several times a week. A week or so ago, it gave up the ghost completely. I called, told her everything I'd already tried and, thankfully, she did not make me go through those steps again. We worked our way through a variety of diagnostics and ultimately she decided the problem was in the very old modem. With the wireless router bypassed, it's hanging in there, but likely a new one will be required.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... my ailing laptop has developed the click of  death. But only intermittently so the actuator arm must still be able to re-set itself. This laptop is only about 2 1/2 years old but I just don't want to throw good money after bad by trying to fix it. It probably didn't help matters that I've dropped it a couple of times. Anyway, this laptop is too heavy to lug around and I am working my way to pan-computer compatibility here. The plan was to let the iMac be the computer I use for all the accounting and so on, and also for storage of photos and files. And eventually I hoped to get a Mac laptop of some sort to be the computer I take to and from work.  I'd really like a Macbook Air for it's supreme portability. But by eventually, I didn't mean now. In fact, I am waiting for the new version which should be released in 2013, maybe in the Spring?  So la la la, I'm ignoring the sudden startling clicks. But not without precautions - I just transferred all my photos onto a new external hard drive and will copy them onto the iMac. And now I'll just keep using this baby until it implodes.