The Pleasures of Reading in Everyday Ramblings

I took this out at Sauvie Island on a birding trip this time of year a few years back. It matches the current mood here though there is a rumor that it might not rain tomorrow. It has only been about 10 days but I am having trouble remembering what dry looks and feels like. This year I have been out and about more than in a very long time and so I am more aware of it.

When I was having my highlights done a few weeks back I started reading Cranberry Bluff on the Kindle app on my phone, a cozy mystery by our very own Forever in Motion. I am so happy she is expending her prodigious energy on these travel related mystery thriller books. She has done an incredible job building her “brand” on Amazon and self-publishing. It was perfect. And it has recipes in the back!

She has a Christmas themed one I think I will read over the holiday.

After listening to some fabulous music on my new headphones, (the Beethoven stands out), a few audiobooks and podcasts about all sorts of interesting things, read poems in the New Yorker, articles in the New York Times, last night I was thinking I just want to read an engrossing book, a fictional book.

So I ordered a contemporary Irish murder mystery and snuggled up with Diego in my new soft green clean flannel sheets (Diego loves my flannel sheets) and read. It was not very long before I fell asleep.

Last night was poetry-reading night and in spite of my desire to be out in the world and share my work I decided not to go, and I was asleep before the break after the feature readers finish.

Clearly this is going to be the way things go until I am able to retire. As I take on my classes and transition into this “Retirement Career” that I am establishing there is just not going to be enough energy to do all that I want to do. I need to not be greedy about experience.

That said, I had a lovely weekend. I managed to get plenty of exercise but also a lot of good quality at home time. There was actually a couple of moments where I was through all that I had to do right that moment and was able to choose to do things.

It took me over a week five minutes at a time to watch the movie Jersey Boys. I had heard Bob Gaudio on Fresh Air months ago and put the movie on my Netflix list. I love movies with music in them and I am a total sucker for a good bio-pic.

They are kind of like the movie version of a cozy mystery for me.

The first hour of the movie is very very slow. The good thing about incrementally working my way through it is that the costumes and sets are marvelous! Just marvelous so I could savor them. And then when they finally got to the part where the band was on American Bandstand and they are wearing these matching suits and start dancing as they sing I was totally hooked.

But my favorite part by far was the closing credits, like a Bollywood movie, where all the actors, in character, do a dance number.

I love the line…”I felt the rush like a rolling ball of thunder”… It is just perfect in that wide lapel big haired interpretation of the early sixties nostalgia that he is evoking. I so admire good songwriting.

With all the troubles in the world it is nice to take a time out now and then.

But now I need to go out in the rain and teach.

Last updated December 14, 2015