Daylight Thoughts

Ah, so good to get that extra hour of sleep this time of year.  And I spent it in deep slumber.  Went to bed last night around 11 and woke up at 6, for the illogical amount of 8 hours sleep.  Good, refreshing.

Made a reading decision yesterday.  I’m two-thirds finished with The Silmarillion, just about done with the Silmarillion part of The Silmarillion, so that leaves the “Akallabeth,” Tolkien’s Atlantis analog, and a small section dealing with the Rings and the Third Age.  Should finish it all in about a week or ten days at the leisurely pace I’m reading / listening to it.  What fiction with Hopper read for the balance of November?

Traditionally, for the last decade or so, November has meant JFK for me.  I got into all the assassination literature around 2003 / 2004, read about twenty or twenty-five books about it.  The result?  Went from a probably believer to just about a confirmed skeptic (regarding a conspiracy, that is).  I was at the library the other day and browsed the JFK section and was uninterested in reading anything.  Then I remembered – my stepdad bought Stephen King’s 11/22/63 for me a while ago, and it’s been sitting on the shelf for a few months.  That’s what I’ll be reading.  See how time travel and horror mixes with the whole affair.

For nonfiction, I started The Fathers of the Church by Mike Aquilina.  This hefty, readable tome focuses on the hundred or so men (and a few women) known as the Church Fathers, who guided the early Church much as a father guides his family, with strength, love, authority, even a bit of righteous anger when necessary.  Tells about the lives of these diverse men, who range from cranky and cantankerous to serene and studious, from Popes and nobles to farmhands and hermits.  Also features lots of their original writings.  About thirty pages in so far, and still very interested.

Halloween was incredible this year.  Never seen the girls work so hard – over four hundred pieces of candy hauled in, stored in three huge bowls now sitting out of reach atop our wine glass cabinet.  They worked hard, I must admit, and the whole soccer regimen yesterday, especially in the cold, the wet, the rain, the mud, was grinding on us all.  Then, yesterday, we hosted one of Little One’s friends over on a play date, and they did nails, played cards, and watched a spooky Disney movie.  Very cute and fun.

More later …