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...