Hi Bob!

Still a little on the cool side today--it's only 73° out! Brrrr! I did sit out in the sun for a while, and that felt really good. It also meant that I got in some quality reading time. I am really enjoying this book.

I won't give anything away here, in case one of my fellow book club members is reading, but I'll post over on our site and clearly state which chapter I'm through. No spoilers from me, never fear! Listen to this:

"Under the silver nailparing of a moon, I felt, though without any melancholy at all, that sense of existential solitude, the being and being alone in a universe, that still nights sometimes give."

Isn't that perfect?! And very much in keeping with my recent harping writing about silence.

I'm also learning a bunch of new words, and find that I do best if I'm sitting here at the computer to look them up. Otherwise, I try to remember what page the word in question is on, and then come in and look them all up when I'm at a stopping point. I've learned words like ukase, puteal, meze, and peripeteial. A lot of times, I'll recognize a word but not remember the definition, but some of these words I've never seen in my life! It's also a challenge to try and figure out what various foreign phrases mean. I get very little of the Greek, some of the French, and most of the German. I'm probably not making it sound like a very fun book to read, but it actually is. The story is intriguing and mysterious, it proceeds with a fairly fast pace, and lately there's been some pretty good sex scenes! Ha ha!

I mentioned that there are Greek phrases: most of the book is set in Greece. Another thing I like about this book--it definitely makes me want to visit that country! I've always been interested in seeing the Acropolis and other Greek ruins, but the description of the vivid blue of the sea and beauty of the countryside makes me want to see it all. Perhaps one day...we've talked about eventually taking a Mediterranean cruise, in which you stop at places like Egypt, Greece, sometimes Morocco...how cool would that be? Another thing to save up for!

I had kind of a hard time choosing what I wanted to make tonight! I had a few possibilities, but I was lacking a key ingredient for most of them (i.e., mozzarella cheese, frozen mixed vegetables). I finally settled on a sausage and corn skillet, served with rice. I've also started making a list for another trip to the grocery store! I decided to make stir fry this week, too, a beef and broccoli deal, and I'll get that stuff fresh.

I was just watching an oriole chow down on an orange I put out on the deck, and as he was eating, a hummingbird flew by him really fast. I swear, the oriole did a double-take, like, "Hey, did you see that?!" HA!

I also wanted to mention that since I have a Google account, I thought I'd try their blogging platform, Blogger. It's okay, but in just fiddling around with it, I find AOL Journals easier to use and in some ways, a little more flexible. You can use custom colors with AOL, and it seems that depending on which template you use, you have a little more room to "spread out" on AOL. Blogger seems a little narrow and "tight" to me. You can wrap text around pictures on Blogger (I do that here, but only because I write first in Google Docs and then copy), but the frame of the template is so small that your pictures have to be fairly small, and wrapped text consists of a very narrow band. They also don't have my beloved Comic Sans font as a choice. Boooo! So I suppose I'll mess with it some more, just out of curiosity, but wanted to throw in my two cents' worth that AOL Journals is fairly user-friendly, once you learn how to do various things.

Finally (at least for the moment), I wanted to be sure to mention Bob, Sheria's brother-in-law. Apparently he really likes being mentioned on her blog--and he sounds like quite a character--so I'm sayin' howdy to Bob. Hi Bob! For those of you who read Sheria, perhaps you'd like to mention Bob, too! In fact, this could become our own little drinking game, just like "The Bob Newhart Show." If you've never played that one (and if I have, it's been many moons ago), anytime a character greets Bob with "Hi Bob!" you have to take a drink of whatever you happen to be imbibing.

Hi Bob! <sip>

Tags: The Magus, John Fowles, Greece, Blogger, AOL Journals, The Bob Newhart Show