Sunday Salon, the first of 2016

Snowy Idaho, photo by P. Kinkela, used with permission

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Weather: Cold, but no snow or precipitation. The above photo was taken by a friend. She lives in Northern Idaho. As you see it is quite snowy there. Bad weather is projected for Oregon where my sister and her husband live. They will be driving home through it. Update: after this blog post was published it started to snow. We have a nice white world right now.

Company: The week after Christmas brought company our way. First Don's dad and his wife came for a few days. We mostly visited and ate. Ha! Kay and I did make our way to a used book store where she bought quite a few books, some for her little lending library she operates in her front yard. Secondly, my sister and brother-in-law and their little dog came up for New Year's Eve and to watch the Alamo Bowl together. The game was an epic fail but the company was good.

Books: Even though I had lots of time off I didn't read as much as I would have liked. The books I finished over break were---

• El Deafo by CeCe Bell---a graphic memoir about growing up deaf. Very sweet.
• The Next Big Thing by Richard Faulk---a nonfiction book in short chapters about inventions/things/concepts which have really turned things around in history. Some of the funny chapters were "teenagers"(who knew they weren't called this until the 1930s?); "the Segway" (Did you know the owner died in a Segway accident?); and "microbiomes" (Gross info about the way to replace the bacteria in your sick and ailing gut. Let's just say, it is a crappy solution.) 
• The Uses of the Body by Deborah Landau---a poetry collection. I didn't care for it at first because I couldn't tell where one poem ended and the next began and the lack of punctuation but once I got past that i found a type of charm in the poetry and I enjoyed several of the poems.
• A Jane Austen Christmas: Celebrating the Season of Romance, Ribbons, and Mistletoe by Carlo DeVito---not an especially well edited book but I enjoyed learning a bit of new info on my favorite author. This was the only book I received as a Christmas gift.

Currently reading:

• The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. I am making slow, but steady progress on this book which I am reading for the Classics Club Challenge. Progress: 52%.
• Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead. This is my current audiobook which I really didn't listen to the whole break so I will get back to it tomorrow as I head back to work.

Today: Taking down Christmas. We spend all the time in early December putting up the Christmas decorations and then we have to put everything away a month later. But I prefer to do this before I go back to work, which happens tomorrow. I think I will use it as an excuse to play Christmas music for one more day, too. Update: It is 1:30 PM and we have almost completely finished taking down the decorations. We just sat down to watch the Seahawks game felling quite accomplished.

Frozen: This video seems perfect for this frozen week. I'm guessing you've already seen it since 74 million people have viewed it, but it is worth a second look:

Resolutions: A few generic goals for me in the year...

• Move more
• Play more
• Call friends more often/socialize more
• Dream
• Seek the positive

May 2016 bring you good and happy times!