View from my favorite park

Saturday August 22, 2009

The weather was absolutely perfect yesterday! The temperature was in the seventies and the breeze was blowing just right. I stayed outside for five hours taking pictures around my house and reading my book, which I've almost finished now and I love it!

More of downtown Nashville

Starting out with Roland

I am a huge Stephen King fan. Huge doesn’t even begin to describe it. I would go so far as to say that I’m his number one fan if I didn’t think it would conjure up the vision of me as an overweight nurse who collects ceramics and the occasional injured writer in the minds those of you who actually read my blog. I have read most all of his books. I could even tell you the differences in his writing before his accident and his writing after if you were so inclined to listen. Some of his books I’ve even reread. I have an original The Shining hardcover first edition from that I can easily say is one of my most treasured collector’s items. He is really the only fiction reader I enjoy reading, any other books I read are usually non fiction since I’m a major knowledge junkie. There has only been one thing he’s written that I never even bothered trying to read, The Dark Tower series. It just never appealed to me. I don’t know why but I just couldn’t bring myself to start it, perhaps knowing it was an epic and realizing I’d have to wait for the next one to come out which with my patience level is not a good thing. I’m so bad about not wanting to wait for the conclusion to anything, books or television shows that since the days of TiVo I simply record the season finale of my favorite shows and wait to watch it until the next season’s first episode is released so I get to see the resolution to any plot mysteries that crept up in the prior episode. On top of hearing that the story was told against a mystic, western background I just didn’t really want to even try to read it. However, a few weeks ago I stumbled upon a story that was in a collection of short stories, one of the better collections of his short stories in my opinion, Everything’s Eventual, called the Little Sisters of Eluria. I read the foreword to it that it was part of the Dark Tower series. I read it simply because it was just another story in the book, after finishing it though I was thoroughly impressed and couldn’t believe what I had been avoiding all of these years. I was rather embarrassed that I had the audacity to say that I was a huge Stephen King fan when I hadn’t even bothered a glance at his epic saga. Perhaps it was meant to be that I wouldn’t stumble across it until this late date, because he did not finish the series until after his accident and I would have worked my self into an aneurysm or stroke waiting for the saga to conclude. I shall start the saga today and I have purchased all of the books from beginning to end so I won’t have to make an interruption between books to drive to the bookstore. I don't think I will be disappointed.

Downtown Nashville

View from pedestrian bridge

It's just around the corner......

I can’t wait for the season to change. Fall will not get here soon enough. My absolute favorite time of year is from mid Sept through early November. If I could pick any month to stay in forever it would be October, and not just because my birthday is on Halloween. The weather is perfect, the leaves are changing, and there is nothing I love better than sitting on my deck, reading a book while an autumn breeze blows against my skin.

The little things

Everybody has different preferences, and many are so engrained in our senses we won’t have it any other way. There are cat people or dog people; those who either prefer a White Castle burger or a Krystal, coffee with cream or no cream. I don’t really think these things are major issues, they can just pose a minor annoyance, especially when you are in a relationship with someone who has preferences opposite to what you do. They say opposites attract, which is true, but little annoyances such as these can eat away at the fabric of a relationship after several years go by if the foundation is not very secure in the first place. My ex was a White Castle eating dog lover who drank his coffee black, I am a Krystal eating cat lover who prefers my coffee with so much creamer in it that it looks like milk. At first these things weren’t a big deal, but as the relationship deteriorated they became big annoyances, just contributing to the underlying current of hatred that was brewing, just more lava building up under the surface for when the volcano finally erupted. I have a friend whose marriage is now ending, and the little differences such as these have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Arguments over where to eat, fighting over a pet, etc. have been impossible to overlook for them although at one time they were. Even though the relationship started to turn bitter long before, these things have just contributed to the demise of it that much sooner. The little things really do factor in to the big picture.

Fluorescent, not sparkling....

It’s been quite awhile since I last blogged. I don’t really have a good reason why. I’m still following politics and the news just as intently as ever, just haven’t been much up to putting my two cents in about it all. Sarah Palin walked away from her post, not really walking away from a life of politics but instead to focus all of her energy on attaining a much higher political position a few years from now. I don’t think she’s going to be a shrinking violet fading back into a life of domesticity. Michael Jackson died. To say that was a big event would be an understatement. I can’t even think of a word to describe it. From his mock marriage to Debbie Rowe to the scary dermatologist that I wouldn’t even let close enough to me to remove a skin tag the whole situation is so crazy that it seems like it can’t be reality, yet it is. I’ve had a lot of projects that I’ve been working on this summer, some I’ve grown quite accustomed to (gardening) and some that are new (making jewelry and sewing). This has kept my attention pretty focused. I’ve also spent as much time as possible outdoors, in the hopes of becoming perhaps a darker shade, one resembling the tint of an actual human instead of a corpse, which just resulted in going from a shade of white to off white and developing a spitz nevus on my shoulder that I have to get surgically removed. I don’t know why I’ve been stuck with such pale skin. When Twilight came out and the actors in it were so pale I thought maybe the pasty white look would be trendy but I soon came to the realization that if sparkling in sunlight doesn’t accompany it then it isn’t that impressive. Sigh.