Looks like I found an opportunity to shake off the winter blahs and get out more often, as well as meet new folks with similar interests.  We’re starting a book club!

Maybe this will take off, maybe it won’t; we just need to try something new and different.  Eight to twelve of us – educated thirty- and forty-something women – will try to agree on a book to read and a venue for meeting each month.  (Yes, men are welcome; we just haven't spread the net that far yet.)

This month’s book choice:  Local Girls by Alice Hoffman

There was nothing particularly scientific involved in this selection process; the ringleader-cohort was uncomfortable with making a pronouncement as to which book, and I just happened to have this one book unopened, brand-new on my nightstand.

And this one was short, at a little over 300 pages.  A nice quick read for a first-attempt at a book club.

(There’s three other books there, unopened, brand-new as well, but this one was ON TOP, begging to be read first.)

Want to join us?  We’re meeting on 29-JAN-04 at noon; I’ll come back and post a summary of our discussion on that date.  Jump in and share your comments at that time on the same book.

2:00:40 PM    comment []

Oh.  My.  God. 

I am so cold. 

I have broken down and done something usually reserved for guests and weekends: I’ve built a fire in the fireplace this morning.

After making the daily school run, I came home and shoveled my driveway; for some damned foolish reason I immediately shoveled my elderly neighbor’s driveway.  He’s basking in the warmth of Virginia right now; I promised I’d keep the drive shoveled so it didn’t look as if no one was home next door while he was away.  Damn it, I should have thought better of that promise, ethics be screwed.  I was chilled to the core by the time I came in, my face feeling like a freeze-dried hide.  Two hours later I still feel cold; my thighs ache, my toes, fingers and nose are numb, the tips of my ears are tingling.

I wish I had a bellows to use to stoke these still feeble flames that haven’t yet caught the oak log in the center of the fireplace.  I need heat and I need it now.

What must life have been like for the pioneers?  The earliest settlers who lived here on the land?  They must have been incredibly hardy stock, to wake up on the morning such as this, trot out to the outhouse before the fire was well and truly stoked, feed the animals and return to the house to make breakfast, all of this without central heat or electricity.  How would one hold a spindle to make yarn for weaving on a morning this damned cold?  How did they bundle their children to keep them from frostbite before sending them miles on foot to school? 

I am such a pansy-*ssed wuss.

A cold one, at that.

10:23:47 AM    comment []