Food and meetings -----> Week in Review, Day 217-223

~ ordered coffee with my sandwich at lunch. Immediately turned 85 years old.

~ took a two-hour lunch, just to read The Pillars of the Earth. You must read it.

~ cancelled events off my calendar, and resolved to stop saying yes to everyone.

~ became a mentor in my networking group.

~ had a 3 1/2 hour meeting and loved every minute of it.

~ stopped into the Fruit Bowl, a cute grocery stand on Waterloo Road outside of Stockton. The fruit was straight off the trees. Best. Nectarine. Ever. Also tried dried vegetables - tasty.

~ played a song on piano by sight. I'm learning to read music - very slowly.

*Sigh* ----> Week in Review, Day 209-215

~ tweeted about the speech while attending a online seminar. Hey, I didn't say my new things were progressive - just new to me. I'm a good listener and don't multitask, so this was big!

~ bought a fiction book on recommendation alone, no idea what the story was about. So far, so good. (The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett)

~ survived our first hellish client.

~ felt left out for not having a baby.

~ splashed water at my friend's dog for 15 minutes, on the dog's request as she tried biting the water.

~ indulged in food and drink over the weekend, and paid for it in yoga on Monday. REALLY bad class.

Day 105 - Got sucked into a teenage fantasy

I avoided Twilight for as long as I could. Right when the first movie was coming out, I broke down and read the first book at the pleading of old friend. It was enjoyable and addicting, like Harry Potter. Then I saw the movie, and then I saw it again. Fine. Enough, I stopped.

I skipped New Moon with every intention to skip the rest of the series. But friends have been tearing me down slowly. "Oh, the next two books are so good, you have to read them." Would you like to know the deciding reason I finally did buy Eclipse? It was 30% off. My loyalties can be bought for $4.

And then I sat up way too long reading way too many chapters when I should have been sleeping. This is Harry Potter all over again. Stephenie Meyer, I raise my fist and curse your name.

Day 95 - Picked up E. B. White

Author E. B. White wrote the familiar classics Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. But he was also a prolific contributor to The New Yorker magazine for almost six decades. His humorous, lively essays were brought together in Writing From The New Yorker 1925-1976 and are thoroughly enjoyable. Here's one: Travel Brochure from Jan 26, 1935

The adventure-mad travel-brochure people run a high fever all year round, deliriously mumbling of far places regardless of season. More than any other group, they arrange life for us in neat grooves. We have just this moment been skirting through a prospectus of winter and spring trips presented to us by a dutiful and precise agent. The trips are divided into "short" and "long." "There's Mexico," says the booklet. "Ten days, $180." And "there's the Mediterranean, 29 days, $485." Our fancy flits along, jog-step, taking in the sights. And then, as a sudden afterthought, the joyous booklet writer really hits his stride. "There's the WORLD," he cries. "97 days, $833.50."

We had never had the planet laid so neatly at our feet, as though dropped there by a spaniel.