A little bit ADD

Went on a walk this AM with the mayor of Bridgeton and a bunch of other people I didn't know.  The annual health walk is a part of the "Let's move" campaign.  We signed a big poster which will be sent with our picture to Michelle Obama.  Our county of Cumberland comes in LAST in the entire state in terms of health statistics.  So the mayor had T-shirts made up that said, "From WORST to FIRST".  It was a beautiful day but I got hot and didn't have a hat or sunglasses.  Then I came in LAST.  Even though it was not a race, it was somewhat demoralizing.  And I was waiting for it to just be OVER.  I know I am slow and have no stamina, but really.  I DO work out but I realize I do a lot of different things during my one hour at the gym.  Doing ONE THING for 40 minutes is almost more than I can take physically OR psychologically (thus, the ADD worry).  Then I think, well, I can go ONLINE for hours.  But while online, I am jumping around from thing to thing.  Even when I read for an hour, I am reading a lot of different things, current newspaper, old newspaper, Nook, current book, overdue book, old magazine, current newspaper, open the mail, do the crossword puzzle and the sudoku, then read a current magazine.

Still have to come to the library for my entertainment.  This AM I had a snoring man to my left and to my right, a young black girl and an older white woman were attempting to order a magazine online (it did not work).  They were ordering a magazine called XXL which seems to be about rappers (?) and they were buying if for a GIFT for someone incarcerated in our local prison. 

So, I told a friend that I was losing weight without really trying.  That is not really true.  I AM trying, I just don't feel like I am being successful.  The exercising is going a lot better than previously, but the eating! About the only thing I have accomplished is to lessen the amount of snacking that I am doing.  If I DO snack, I try to eat something that is only 100 calories.  Nighttime is still the worst, though.

We had some wacky storms on Thursday.  Two storms, one in the morning and one in  the evening, each had about 10 minutes of really bad stuff.  Luckily, I wasn't on THIS street in Rosenhayn, New Jersey, during those minutes.....

Finished a bunch of books

Book review: Life after life : a novel, by Jill McCorkle.  I wanted to read this book as the author went to my college, Hollins University,  in Roanoke, Virginia.  I borrowed it from the Vineland Public Library (FIC McCorkle Jill).  Unfortunately, there is another book with the same title out right now.  Maybe because I am reading too many books at one time, I had trouble keeping the characters straight in this one.  The characters are all residents or workers in a retirement home.  There is the narrative which jumps around to all of the different characters.  In between the chapters are inserts about other people and little segments by those people.  They all seem to be people known by one of the characters, Joanna, who is a volunteer at the nursing home.  I liked the character  who was just faking alzheimers so that his son wouldn't bother him.


Book review: Tuesday's gone, by Nicci French.  I borrowed this book from the Vineland Public Library (MYS French Nicci).  I learned from the flap that this name "is the pseudonym of the internationally bestselling writing partnership of suspense writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French".
It is the second novel in the Frieda Klein series and ended sort of mysteriously, leaving room for more books.  Our investigator is referred to as a "brilliant reclusive psychotherapist".  She assists the investigation into who might have killed a man who seems to have insinuated himself into the lives of quite a few people with money.  He was a different man to each of them.  Frieda tries to figure out who is telling the truth and who did what to whom and when.  London milieu.

 

 

 

Book review: L'étranger, by Albert Camus.  Quite proud of myself as I read this book in French.  It is not really difficult, being a rather short book.  Had to read it for a book club so I even took notes.  I know I read it long ago when I majored in French.  This copy came on interlibrary loan from the Matawan-Aberdeen Public Library in Matawan, New Jersey (FRE CAMUS).  This first lines are quite famous and can be recited by many people, especially French majors.  "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte.  Ou peut-ètre hier, je ne sais pas".  (Today, mother died.  Or maybe yesterday, I don't know).

The quintessential existentialist novel is about a man who drifts through life, getting into trouble after murdering an arab who is threatening his friend.  During the court trial, it comes out that he didn't cry at his mother's funeral and this adds to the damning evidence against him.  Waiting to see if he is condemned to death, he philosophizes that we are all condemned to death eventually.  And thinks that his mother was about to start a new life with a fiancé so no one should have cried over her.  I can't find the cover of my Gallimard 1942 paperback, but here is the link if you would like to read it.

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/31581027/A-Camus-L%E2%80%99Etranger

 

 

 

Remembrance of things past

My weekly laptop picture is of Proust in his bed writing his most famous book, A la recherche du temps perdu.  I saw his actual bed at the Carnavalet museum in Paris. 

http://carnavalet.paris.fr/en/museum-carnavalet

This museum is HUGE and free and lots of cool stuff including old store signs and fragments of stained glass windows from churches.

Not many people can say that they have read all of this multi-volume work.  I have tried but ended up skipping some.  Very dense, he can go on for pages about the sensations evoked when he bites into a madeleine.  I love the fact that he wrote such an evocative book IN BED.



Starbucks is really incommodious today.  I came here because my exercise class ends at 9 and the libraries don't open until 10.  Here is what I don't like about Starbucks:
- only one table big enough for me and it is continually occupied
- small round table barely big enough for my laptop and mouse.
- table is sticky
- chair is hard

On the plus side:
- they have a plug
- they have newspapers for sale

Exercise for arthritis class was strange this AM.  I ran over there for 8 AM since my excursion for today was cancelled due to extreme weather which is nowhere in sight.  Teacher was not there.  Another attendee was there with an audio cassette of our teacher.  So the two of us did the class looking at an audio cassette player instead of the teacher.  It worked!

Foiled again

Weather tomorrow getting in the way of my plans.  5 of us had planned to go up to Grounds for sculpture.  Do you know how hard it is to get 5 people to agree on a date and a plan? 

I am so close to finishing so many books.  Reading is my favorite activity (probably because it involves SITTING).  Still slogging through several books about Paris, and the book I found in the Newark airport and the book written by Jill McCorkle, who attended my college (Hollins), and the new David Sedaris book, and L'etranger in French, and a children's book about Monet in French.  And there are MORE...

Made a vow to get better about gifts.  Changed one of my money envelopes to be earmarked for such, since I never have extra spending money and thus am never prepared for birthdays, weddings, etc.
Everyone else is so generous and I am just BEHIND and lacking in inspiration.  I hate to shop and I hate to spend money, but I love cool gifts.  Had an urge to go back to Paris and SHOP which is dumb because it was so overpriced over there. 

Friday it rained all day and Monday it rained all day.  One weather guy said tomorrow was the most worrisome day of the weather year so far.  The nice thing about Paris is that even though it rained frequently, it didn't rain a lot and it didn't rain for long.

Blogging humor

    
I should give credit to the New Yorker.  I have been carrying this page around since February 6, 2006.  I come from a family of New Yorker readers.  My father used to get all of us a subscription each Christmas, my mom, himself, and his four daughters.  Now that he is gone, we keep up the tradition, on a rotating basis.

Lovely morning listening to NPR and trying to get the humidity out of my house.  I even left the air conditioner on while I'm out.  Can't really justify that now that I don't have pets.  I love the sunshine but hate the humidity.

Yesterday I had a delightful birthday.  Breakfast at my sister's, gifts, flowers, dinner with my "girlfriends of the '70's" (aren't those the best kind?), phone calls, email messages, Facebook remembrances, singing.  Couldn't have asked for a better day except that the weather could have been better.  Torrential rain and drizzles with occasional brightening.

It's MY day

I am getting lots of attention today.  Facebook notices, breakfast, gifts, yoga class singing Happy birthday to me.  And here I sit doing my favorite activity...getting online.  Lousy weather forecast today but it is a bit brighter out than one would have expected.  Oh well, you can't have EVERYTHING on your birthday.

Book review: Hardly knew her : stories, by Laura Lippman, audio book performed by Linda Emond and Francois Battiste.  I wanted to listen to this because I noticed that Laura Lippman was speaking at the recent New Jersey Library Association conference in Atlantiic City.  She writes about Baltimore a lot and I was going there last Saturday.  I did not enjoy this audio book much until the end.  Then my CD player in the car broke and I couldn't listen to the last disc.  I liked the part featuring stories about her detective from Baltimore, Tess Monaghen, which provided me with details I may have forgotten about this character.  My lack of appreciation stems from the fact that most of the stories are about using and abusing people and a lot of sex and murder.  The audio on this CD seemed a bit dim and did not jibe with my radio volume.

Having a lot of trouble pasting pics today.  Here again I try to feature one of three great stores right across from my hotel in Paris....La petite chaloupe.  Artisinal sardines in gorgeous containers.  Then the wine store, La p'tite cave.  Then a wonderful bread and pastry store.  One day I bought a bagette and some butter and ate the whole thing by myself.

The mysterious Poe toaster

Now I remember the story.  Someone came for many years on the anniversary of Poe's death and left red roses and some cognac.  This is the third year the person has failed to show.  Actually this gravestone marks the ORIGINAL grave.  Poe's remains were moved to another part of the cemetery in 1875.