The ruins

Am listening to an audiobook by Scott Smith called The ruins.  Everything is ominous.  A bunch of friends are in Cancun and they go on an adventure to find the missing brother of a guy they ran into.  The story is fraught with confusion and dread.  The Americans are traveling with a Greek who speaks no English, and a German, the brother of the missing guy.  They run into unfriendly Mayans who speak no English.  There are flies and snakes and unhelpful people and secret paths and it is all making me very nervous;

Speaking of The ruins, I feel like a bit of a ruin myself.  Think I am going to have to make an EFFORT to lose weight.  I can't think of another way to stop the inexorable march of time.  I am feeling decrepit.  I look around at some of my women friends who are over 70 or over 80 and they look great.  I feel like crap and feel like I look the same way.  I have tried exercising and I don't feel any better.

Finished another library book, Started early and took my dog.  I love that title.  The book is by Kate Atkinson.  I found it enjoyable but very confusing.  Many characters moving around.  A  murder, a snatched child, a social worker, a detective, many car trips.  From the flap I learned that the author has written several other books featuring the same former private detective Jackson Brodie.  I liked this quote, "Now, like so much else in Jackson's world, videos were obsolete".  I liked the Britishness of this book.  "He came to the end of every day feeling as if he had failed somehow.....He lived his life in a state of guilt, every day waiting to be found out.  He wasn't even sure what it was he had done".  "Speaking truth to power.  That was what the Quakers said, he'd had to arrest a few in the eighthies, peaceniks, yacking on about "direct action" and Cruise missles.  For people who worshipped in silence they seemed to talk a lot."

Laughter yoga

Just took my first laughter yoga class.  I couldn't imagine what that could possibly entail!  Also, I was feeling very grumpy and resisting the idea of laughing.  We did do some fun and interesting little exercises and even worked up a sweat!  I like the laughter pill exercise, where you take a pretend pill and it sends you off into laughter and silliness.  Each pill that you take causes MORE hilarity.  I could really use a pill (pretend or otherwise).  So, we did stuff for one half hour and I called it exercise.  Laughter meditation, done with the eyes closed, almost made me want to cry, not laugh.  I was thinking about my mother at the time.

Americans are exercise maniacs, at least the ones who are bothering.  Read an article about somewhere in California where the outdoor classes are annoying to other people.  The oceanside park is filled with mats, equipment, emoting and sweating people and the cries of instructors.  They are obstructing running traffic, messing up the grass and being noisy.  So, they are thinking about charging more money for instructors to use the outdoor space or limiting the number of people per instructor.

Playlist working TOO well today.  Playing songs in order.  Usually I have to select each one, but I am used to that method now.

Another close call

So I missed a step and my computer and myself came crashing down in the dark entryway.  My life is so full of booby traps.  Once again I have emerged unscathed (OK, maybe my finger is black and blue) but my computer is definitely working.  I really have to get the Internet at home.  Don't like coming out in the freezing cold wind.  Although once I reached the local McDonald's, it is pleasant enough. 

Have been exercising and waiting to feel better.  I still feel like crap and hate most every minute of it. Every week I add five minutes to my requirements.  This week I should be exercising for 50 minutes each day. Today was the third day in a row.  Tomorrow I think I have "laughter yoga".  I can't imagine what that is all about.  At least I don't have to drive so far to get to it.

Finished an audiobook, Back to blood, by Tom Wolfe.  It was read by Lou Diamond Phillips.  It was way over the top.  Taking place in Miami, a Cuban cop and his Latina girlfriend were  in most of it.  Very intense racial relations between WASPs, Cubans, Russians, Haitians.  He points out how little anyone is into religion any more and that we are all going back to our blood lines and our ethnic and racial prejudices and preferences.  Where he went too far was in naming famous people CLOSE to their actual names and one woman was actually called Miss Titsapoppin.  "Tom Wolfe is off and running headlong into the only city in the world where people from a different country with a different language and a different culture have taken over at the ballot box".

The end of your life book club

I need to return this overdue library book.  My sister gave it to me for Christmas so I will take my notes to that copy to peruse.  I love books ABOUT books.  This is about the books Will Schwalbe and his mom read and discussed as she was dealing with pancreatic cancer.  He is gay and has a cooking website and his mom was involved in many good works, schools for Afghanistan being one.  There is a list at the end of all the books they read.  Of course, I am going to copy it.  I wanted to read this book because I had a very good friend who died of pancreatic cancer and I love the title of the book.  I didn't read books with my friend but I have very poignant memories of movies and plays we attended during his illness.  He was wild to LIVE and to SHARE.

The other book I finished was NW, by Zadie Smith.  I enjoyed it in spots, but it was somewhat confusing.  Lots of London geographic references and switching of characters with no notice.  Even the format is odd, going from single space to double space and choosing not to indent the beginning of paragraphs.  It gave me an odd feeling of vertigo.  (It probably doesn't help that I am reading 10 books at one time!)  Someone (I forget who) voted this one of the top ten fiction books of 2012).  Just sayin'....  NW stands for Northwest London and four characters are followed, 2 women and 2 men.  They all grew up on a council estate called Caldwell and are now trying to make their adult lives.   It is about "people who live somewhere special and others who live nowhere at all.  And many people in between".

Thrift shop

Just added this song to my playlist.com.  Most of my email is SOOOO boring.  I did come across this gem on Philly.com called Spotify's top 10 most streamed tracks.  I am listening to each of these songs.  Not that I don't have enough songs on my playlist.  Almost one hundred.  More than I have time to listen to.  To get back to my email, mostly I get requests for money.  Plus I get email for another person with my same name who lives in Bradenton, Florida.  I called her up once or twice to discuss the matter and her daughter told me she never had an email even slightly like mine.  It is really irritating to get things from the wrong school and the wrong politcal spectrum.  Even the RIGHT schools or political parties are bothersome!

Have been spending a lot of time with various groups of friends or family lately.  Of course, it IS Christmas.
This morning I learned that they have a senior roller skating session on Monday mornings.  Too bad I have a yoga date then.  I should try skating again.  It has been over a decade since my last visit, whereupon I broke my wrist.  Prior to that I was very "devil may care" and went by myself a lot.

The longest year of my life has been the year I turned 65.  And the year is only half over.  The longest TWO years of my life have been my contract with Sprint.  It is over the end of December and I think I will enjoy the sense of FREEDOM for awhile.  Don't enjoy the need to make a DECISION, however.  What phone, what company?  I have to come to a (happy?) medium between the two realities:  1. I am FRUGAL, and 2. I want more features on my phone.

No body drying with hair dryers

This sign is posted in the women's changing room at the health club.  Does not this bring up a lovely image?

Made a date to meet a friend at the Megabyte cafe.  When I got there (loaded up with all of my computer stuff, naturally), it said "Closed until further notice".  Dang!  News from the world of small business.  I am getting a bit tired of schlepping my STUFF all over and finding no room in the inn, as it were.

Always feel like I am rushing and overwhelmed with too much to do.  What the heck did I do when I was actually WORKING?  I was laying in bed pondering the day and which direction to go in when my girlfriend called and said she was going to be in the area.  So, all I got done today was about an hour of home essentials, 45 mins of walking alternating with lifting, lunch, and now about an hour of computer stuff.  Then only enough time to get picked up to go look at a friend's 9 foot tall Christmas tree.

Just noticed that there IS spell check on Blogger.  Only became aware as I was using a friend's computer the other night and she had it turned on.  Thank goodness for friends!

You can't make this stuff up

Comment when I told the tale of my sister, who dropped her keys down the slit in the elevator on the way to her apartment in Soho on Christmas eve.  The next night she left her car unlocked and running.  No one noticed until we woke up in the morning.  Luckily, that was in someone's back driveway in New Jersey and not in Soho.

Returning this book to the library.  I didn't really enjoy Drift, by Rachel Maddow.  The subtitle is: the unmooring of American military power.  OK, so not too inviting.  I had gotten enthralled with her on TV around election time so I checked her book out of the library.  According to a blurb on the back, "she tells the epic story of how American warfare came to be both never-ending and practically invisible."

Had a nice trip (my annual) to the Reading Terminal market in Philadelphia today.  Got really busy and crowded.  Nice that it is all indoors, once you get there.  A panoply of mostly food stands...cheese, honey, spices, teas, breads, restaurants, meats, ice cream.  It was quite bright and festive.  Bought a few things until. I couldn't carry anything more.  Buying spices in bulk reminds me of when I lived in Barcelona and went to the market every day.