Weekends...

This was a good weekend, and I have to say I enjoyed myself.  I had tasks to accomplish, but they weren't too onerous and they were accomplished.  I walked/ran 17 miles, some of it up hill, since Thursday, so I have been working out.  I had a minor thing done to an errant eyeball, and it went well, and my Ebay adventures, while not glitch free, were profitable. And on this snowy blustery day I was outside only when I needed to be and have enjoyed my time in front of the fire with a book or three.

I ate well, too.  I regaled readers about last night's dinner, but tonight's was almost as good.  I saw a small little hunk, a solitary person sized hunk, of corned beef and I made corn beef with potatoes and carrots.  The meat melted and parted under the gentle weight of a fork, and the potatoes and carrots needed only a hint of Irish butter to be moist and tasty.  It was more than gastronomically satisfying--it filled my house with gentle, warm, smells, and it more than warmed me on a cold day.

I read a lot, more so now that in the past few years.  More time in some ways, but also it is easier with Kindle.  Though my house is filled with books, my IPad is filled with more.  Some it is what snobby folk might called literature, but far more seems to be just books.  I tend to read series by solid authors--since Christmas I have read a book shelf full of, among others, Michael Connelly, J.A. Jance, Peter Robinson, William Krueger, John Sandford, and lately, John D. MacDonald.  I know--hardly literature.  But with my impending Florida trip, I have really enjoyed MacDonald's Travis McGee.  McGee waxes philosophically as he tilts at windmills and beds tan, sandy-bottomed lasses.  These 21 books (I've read 14 so far this year) are so embedded in the 1960s that they truly do make me laugh.  I am old, but these are historic even for me.  He writes about "square" people, and the cars are Falcons and sporty Sunbeams and people drink highballs and he laughs at people who aren't as tan as he is and he takes his retirement a chunk at a time, living well on his salvage business.

Of course I have read them before, which is part of the fun and why I have enjoyed them so much.  My parents both read a lot and our house was filled with books--none by Sinclair Lewis or Proust, but lots of hard-boiled mysteries like these books.  I don't remember them buying these at bookstores, but they were always around.  I guess it is comfort reading, to read books again that I read first as tattered paperbacks in the 1970s.  Trav (his friends call him that) would have been the same age as my Dad--I wonder if he wanted to tilt at windmills, too.  Still, these books are fun tie to a different era and to my Dad.  Truly comfort reading.