This afternoon I ran for the third time this week! Yeah me! This is the first time that I have done that in a long, long time! In doing such. I achieved one of my April goals which was to run three times per week, duh! Now I have to match that feat for the rest of the month and beyond!
One of the New Age albums that has been in my music rotation for the last week or so is Midwinter from Jon Richards. The album has been the soundtrack for a run As while as being played while I was reading and doing my morning yoga routine and it has been enjoyed in all those. Jon Richards is a New Age artist whose hometown is Minehead, Somerset in the United Kingdom. Time for a favorite digression of mine – finding out where towns are!! A quick googling of maps ended with this map showing the location of Minehead
So yesterday i almost put off my run until today because it was supposed to be a whole lot warmer. The forecast said that today’s high was going to be 77! So far it is nowhere near that temperature. One reason not to put off the run today was that I have to work at Target 5:30 to 11:15 pm and I had half-day’s work for Lippincott, that was made a longer by the wet soil in the woods that tried to swallow the backhoe. The bottom line is that I didn’t put of the run yesterday and I’m glad I didn’t!
So we are almost a third of the way through April and I guess it’s time to update my Reading Challenges status and update the list of books I hope to finish this month!!! First yesterday I finished book 15 for 2015 Woo Hoo! To put this minor accomplishment in perspective I finished book 15 in 2014 on August 17th! I actually believe that having a plan and the reading challenges have helped me keep up this great pace!! (and not working full-time help just a wee little bit!)
The Chessmen is the third and final book in Peter May’s outstanding Lewis Trilogy. The trilogy follows the life of ex-Detective Inspector Fin MacCleod as a returns to his home on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Through the outstanding writing of Peter May the reader is swept away to that rugged landscape and given a glimpse of the life of the people of live there.In this final installment Fin has left his former life and is temporarily living with his childhood love Marsaili. Fin has taken a job as head of security for Red River Estates. The Estates are experiencing problems with poachers and one of Fin’s first assignments reunites him with his childhood friend John Angus Macaskill, known as Whistler, who both poaches and lives on the Red River Estates. One night while pursuing Whistler across the rugged hills of the estate, they are forced to take shelter in a cave, The next morning they awake to find a loch in the valley of the hills has drained and a small aircraft is visible within the loch. The plane is the missing plane of a former friend Roddy MacKenzie, lost seventeen years earlier. When they explore the plane they find a decomposing body of a man who did not die in a plane crash but was murdered! Discovering the who and why of the murder will turn the lives of some of Fin’s closest friends upside down!!
I often joke that if I was ever on Jeopardy and the Final Jeopardy category was English Royalty I should just be prepared to be a loser!! When it comes to that category, in the infamous words of Sgt Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes fame, “I know NOOOTTTHHHHING!” But I do know a bit more after reading When Gods Die by C.S. Harris.
So Ms. Yin and Mr. Yang, known respectively as our grandchildren Zoe and Oliver both went to see the Easter bunny. As usual, they both had very different reactions. The calm and cool Miss Zoe maintained her calm and cool demeanor and Oliver was just a little upset, mostly at those big furry hands! Of course Oliver’s reaction could have been anticipated considering how much he loved Santa!
Yesterday was the first really, really nice spring day we’ve had in the Delaware Valley with temperatures climbing into the high 60s, it was a great day for a run. Even though the weather was great, I tried to talk myself out of the run! “You’re tired. Today was the first day you worked at Target in the morning in a long time” I told myself. “Maybe you should just do it tomorrow.”, “you have to go get your holds at the library today” were other attempts to sidetrack the run!! But I did not give in, when I got home I was determined to run, so I thought how about if I plot out a new course! I’ve been running the same course since I started back at the beginning of this month, it’s time for a change!! I plotted out a new course and made it 3.1 miles. I’ve been running 2.8 miles so I should easily be able to get the extra distance!! Now for the music!! I decided some progressive rock would be just the thing and Sylvium a heavy prog band from The Netherlands was my choice! I have been listening to and enjoying their latest album Waiting for the Noise and the fact that it has lots of long instrumental breaks makes it perfect.
A quick Reading Challenges Update! This afternoon I finished book number 13 for 2015.When Gods Die -a Sebastian St.Cyr mystery from C.S.Harris. This is the first book that I have read in this series and it will not be my last!! It is actually Book #2 of what is now a 10 book series. The book’s setting is London in June of 1811, where Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin is investigating the murder of a beautiful young wife of an aging marquis. The young woman was found dead in the arms of the Prince Regent with a jeweled dagger that once belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie in her back. And a necklace that belonged to Sebastian’s dead mother around her neck! I will write my complete review tomorrow but for now I’ll just say I really, really liked the book!!
