12/31/2009

End of year post

Hmm. I suppose these end-of-year posts are supposed to be somehow profound reflections on the year past, but it's really just another calender day to me. I declare this a profound-free zone, at least for today.

On that note, we've made it past the one-year mark with regard to last year's ice storm. Not that we won't still get hit by something nasty, but it was nice to see that anniversary go by without the sound of tree limbs cracking and falling.

January 2 marks seven months since I broke my ankle. There's a bit of lingering soreness-not surprising, I suppose, since the joint was basically dislocated when the fibula broke and the ligaments on the opposite side tore. People ask if the ankle hurts when the weather changes. The honest answer is...maybe. It's still too close to the time of injury for me to know for certain what's remaining from the soft-tissue damage, and what's weather-related.

I have my new calendar unwrapped and ready to hang up. Like last year's (and a number of other previous years'), it's a Classic Sailing calendar, with images from the Mystic Seaport--Rosenfeld Collection. I became fascinated with sailing ships when I researched them for Blood Money, and a boat-building firm plays a role in the short mystery "The Uncle Hunt." Looking forward to another year of gazing at water and wind-filled sails.

On the reading front--

Just recently finished The Abbot's Gibbet, by Michael Jecks. Like the Joliffe mysteries, these are set in Medieval England, though these are set slightly more than a century earlier.

Currently I have three books going. One is Murder by the Book, by Rex Stout. These are always pretty fast reads, and it's always great to get a Nero Wolfe book that I haven't read yet. The second is my 'laundromat book', to be read while waiting for the washers and dryers to finish doing their thing. It's City of Shadows, by Ariana Franklin, set in post WWI Germany. Haven't gotten far into it yet.

The third book is Mistress of the Art of Death, also by Ariana Franklin. It's set in King Henry II's England. (Detecting a pattern here?) It's also the first book I've bought and downloaded on the Barnes & Noble e-reader on my computer. It's not the first time I've read ebooks, so that's not a new experience for me, but I am finding that I like the reader software, and with the ability now to use gift cards to buy ebooks at the online store, I'll probably be doing it fairly regularly.

Does this mean I'll be going to straight e-reading? No. I've got a box of paper books coming via UPS on Monday. I really don't understand why some people freak out and declare that you'll only get their paper books when you've pried them from their cold, dead fingers. It's not an either/or proposition. Fear of change comes in many forms, I guess.

As for anything else of relevance...

Lost a friend to cancer this past month. By the time she'd gone to the doctor to find out what was wrong, the cancer had already gotten a foothold. Chemo kept it in check for a while, but in the end there was nothing that could be done. We'll miss you, Linda. See you in the resurrection.

And that's the most profound I intend to get today.

See you in the coming year...

12/12/2009

A Senior Moment

My husband and I had dinner tonight at IHOP (it's inexpensive, relatively fast, and my husband likes breakfast foods at odd hours of the day), and in looking at the bill as the time arrived to pay it, I realized we'd been undercharged for what we ate. A quick check turned up why--the waitress had rung us up for the Senior BOGO deal, where one meal bought at regular price gets you a second free, for people 55 years and up. When I protested that neither of us qualified for the discount, she smiled and said, "That's all right!"

Now, I know my husband and I both have gray hair mixed in with the brown, but I had no idea we looked that old!

It's amazing that we're nearly halfway through the final month of the year. My son is almost 21. In just a few days over three months from now, my first book comes out. At this point, my publisher is already in the process of arranging reviews, and advertising is being arranged as well. The time is going to both drag and fly, which sounds like a contradiction unless you've been in this sort of situation.

Winter has arrived, and with quite a kick. We didn't get hit as bad as people further north did, but it was much colder than what we're used to. It was only a year ago, the end of this month (I think) that we had that massive ice storm that knocked out the power for days and broke trees everywhere. You can bet it's on a lot of people's minds this year, as we watch temperatures sitting on average 10-15 degrees lower than what's normal. There were a lot of trees trimmed back after the last storm, but if we get as much ice as we did last year, the weight of it is sure to pull some of the lines down. Folks are holding their breaths. You can also bet those who got generators last year are probably going to laugh at those of us who didn't, if it happens again this year.

Just read Margaret Frazer's new Joliffe the Player mystery, A Play of Treachery. It's the fifth in the series, set in the 1400's in England and now in France. Joliffe is an interesting character. I'm glad she's spun him off into his own series.

Okay, enough for now. Until next time~~