Yeah, More Weather, but also books, hockey, knitting, and so on

Sure, pretty, whatever.

I mean, if you like that sort of thing.

It can be hazardous, though.

And really, everything is hidden behind snowbanks by now.

When I got up this morning, it was still snowing, only lightly but still, I had thought it was supposed to be done by then. So after I had breakfast and it was still coming down, I turned the radio on to see what they said about it.

The weather guy on the news radio station did not address it. Perhaps he felt that this storm was so yesterday? In fact, he began his report with these words, more or less:

Another storm is coming in on Saturday, which could bring 4-8 inches...

Holy maria.

Almost better was when, on the way to work, the forecast informed me that it would be sunny today, though in fact it was snowing still. Yes, the sun came out later, but really, would it have been so hard to say that it would become sunny, or turn sunny later, or something?

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I keep seeing articles and coverage of the situation in Egypt, and I have a confession to make: I'm not reading them. I can't. I can't take it; it makes me all shaky when I start reading about riots and imagining (as I can't help imagining) what it would be like to be there, to have your normal everyday life become a place where violence erupts around you, where nothing is safe. And then I start thinking about how all safety is more or less an illusion, and unsurprisingly this does not help me get through the day.

I am an ostrich by nature. (I know, they don't really bury their heads in the sand, so sue me.) I gave a loud amen when a blogger I like wrote recently:

Yes indeed I WOULD prefer to be ignorant of bad stuff if there is no way I can improve it. This is why I don't watch the NEWS.

Thank you! I knew I couldn't be the only one. I do read the paper, but not all of it, and when I am only half-awake (that's not a coincidence, it's a strategy), because my mental health gets rickety when I hear too much bad stuff.

I want to believe that small changes add up to big change, that what I do can make a difference when added to what everyone else does. But I falter a little when faced with the concrete: what can I do about Egypt? What can I do here that will help there? I don't manage my time all that well, so I don't have a lot of time. I have some money saved up but that's for my impending unemployment; wouldn't it be irresponsible to give it away? What can I do?

So I don't read about it.

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I have an update on Goodreads, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. I've been happily using it since I ran across it. I like that it's easy to use, I can customize how I want to tag each book, and even tag forthcoming books as to-be-read. I've done some wandering around, and there's a lot there.

However. It appears that they do not allow you to mark or tag a book as read more than once; if you can, I sure can't see how. If this is true (I sent them a help message today to confirm), then I doubt I will continue to use the site, as re-reading is a major part of what I do, and thus what I want to keep track of. I can understand that it might not be important to them--they're about the reviews--but it's crucial to me.

I would certainly keep using it otherwise, because I have been enjoying the site, but the base of what I want to do is keep track of every book I read, whether it's the first time or the hundredth reading. I guess it's back to the old spreadsheet idea. Let's see, a column for the date, title, author, then columns I can check for if it's a first-time read, a re-read, from the library, through Project Gutenberg...

Well, in January (starting Jan 7, anyway), I read 20 books, eleven for the first time and nine re-reads. Twelve came to me through the library, and five were through Project Gutenberg, while one was loaned to me by a friend. Yes, only two of the books were ones I own*, and to be honest on one of them I was reading my mother's copy. Now there's a statistical anomaly!

*I do own one of the ones I read through Gutenberg, too. Well, whatever.

Another weird book-related fact is that I haven't yet used the B&N gift card I got for Christmas. Such things usually burn a hole in my pocket! But between being busy and being snowed in, the thing has lasted into February. I believe that's a record! I can promise that I won't still have it in March.

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The Bruins did win the other night, and they play again tonight. I was slightly late turning the game on, and just as I was checking and saw that it was just over a minute played and they already scored, boom! They scored again! Quite a pleasant surprise. That's not all I missed, either; a couple of minutes later, when a Bruin was going to the penalty box, I saw that there were two players already there.

I had to watch the intermission report to catch up: three fights in the first four seconds! Whoa. And I missed Lucic's goal, tuned in to see Bergeron's first, then saw his second and Thornton scored too. Wild period. May they keep it up.

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I want to show you what I've been knitting (other than socks), but it isn't all that photogenic right now. It started like this:


And when it was smaller, you could kind of see the sections:


But now, it looks like this most of the time:


Spread out, it's more like this:


And I'm loving it. More another time.