being not doing

Over the past few weeks I’ve been out on Pearl for three longer rides, in the range of 15-18 miles. I’m not my friend Frances, who’s been racking up hundreds of kilometers per week on her bike, Lucky. Nonetheless, after those two years when Pearl languished in the back room looking sad as […]

I’ve been busy lately, and hadn’t realized how much time had passed since I’ve gotten it together to write up anything I’ve been doing. The thing that’s been keeping me busy has been gardening. Although gardening is a far too genteel way of describing what we’ve been doing. Yard work is really […]

On the whole, I was disappointed in this series by Garth Nix. The first book, Sabriel, was decently engaging. I didn’t love it, but it was clever and the level of the angst of the teen protagonists was bearable. It reads as a stand-alone book, and I enjoyed it more than the […]

We had no idea when we moved here that we were moving to a haven of sorts for wildlife in this area. The past few weeks have been full of wildlife, in more ways than we could have imagined. We’d heard from our neighbors that coyotes, foxes, and something which might have been […]

Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey, is the latest novel in a series that I’ve been reading for a few years now. With each new volume, the books have declined, which is a shame because the first, Kushiel’s Dart is engaging and clever and compellingly well-told. The plot, however, is quite involved, and this […]

I wasn’t aware of it until I read Anil’s Ghost, but I have been waiting years for Michael Ondaatje to write another novel. The book is lovely, one where you are somewhat in thrall to the prose once you begin. It’s been long enough since I read The English Patient that I have […]

In honor of the possibility that I may be hosting someone I’ve known for over two decades and his band, I alphabetized our CDs.
Yes, we’ve lived in this house for over a year, and yes, they were alphabetized at the previous house. So, no, there’s really no excuse for why they haven’t […]

One of the projects I’ve become involved with this spring is a new community garden, the Master Peace Community Garden. The garden is a project of the Engaged University garden program at the University of Maryland, and is located at the Center for Educational Partnership in Riverdale Heights. A large part of the […]