Random Thoughts - The Lull Before the Storm

This is a good week.  Nothing extra dotting my calendar, no meetings I'm obliged to attend, no urgent errands to run or needs to be met.  Tana French wrote that "only teenagers or adults who think like teenagers find that boring is a bad thing.  The rest of us know that it is a gift from the gods."

I couldn't have said it better.
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I participated in a webinar with  Alan Mathios, Dean of the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University this morning.  Webinar is a weird word, especially when it includes the use of a telephone for oral communication.  I've been playing with the words for an hour or so and can't come up with anything more mellifluous, though, so I'll stop judging and move on.

As an aside, it's very cool to have the Dean recognize my name and hope to see me in Arizona.  I felt a little bit special.
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Thomas the Wonder Dog kept SIR and Little Cuter up all night at the Emergency Vet last weekend.  It's awful when the patient can't tell you where it hurts.  They say he's on the path to recovery, but my girl is leaving a part of her soul at home with him every time she leaves for work.

Love is a sharp edged sword, sometimes.
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I've updated the sidebar once again, but I want to make a special mention of Tana French's The Likeness.  If you are going to read one police procedural/undercover operation novel in your life, this is it.  Watching the protagonist fall deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole has me dreaming of moving into the house she's infiltrated along with her.  Few novels have touched me this deeply.
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I have a new regimen at the gym.  I'm using the elliptical-with-arms, which keeps my legs moving in the proper alignment while I swing my body, left and right, over my hips, turning my head fully in each direction.  It's an attempt to loosen up the stiffness I've accumulated over the last two years.

With calf raises engaging my glutes and adductors, and squats in front of the mirror re-educating my quadriceps, I'm rolling less and striding more.  It may well be that I can get rid of this limp, after all.
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Becca interviewed Jeff Kinney, author of The Wimpy Kid series, yesterday.  Mr. 9, home sick from school, was beside himself with joy.  I rose several steps in his estimation just by knowing someone who knows Mr. Kinney.

I'll take it.
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College basketball is back and I am, once again, watching too much sports on tv.  This week features tournaments with the best teams competing.  How lucky am I to have connections to so many of those schools - Kansas, Georgetown, Indiana - and how much luckier am I to have graduates who want to text and tweet about them. 

It's those little things, the random Rock Chalk Jayhawk or Hoya Saxa cheer across the interwebs, that make me feel closer to those I love. 

And then there's the fact that I U is rated #1.  It must be the warm-up pants, don't you agree?

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I suppose I should begin to collect the items I'll need to create Thanksgiving here at home, but I'm kind of enjoying the peaceful feeling I have right now.  There are no lurking projects (well, there are, but I'm within the "okay to ignore them" time frame) and no guests on the horizon.  I may just wait until next week before I gear up for that particular shopping spree.

 

There's something delightfully decadent about taking the last 40 pages of my novel out to the lounge chair in the sun in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon.  I am guilt free, having gone to the gym this morning and going to Pilates in the afternoon.  The absence of pressure is surprising, tickling the corners of my brain, wondering why I am so calm.

 

I doubted that I'd ever get to this place again.  I'm going outside right now to enjoy it.