What a hard rain brings to mind

Too rainy today for taking a decent walk at lunchtime so I went a few blocks from the office to a bookstore I hadn't visited before. They had both new and used book sections and even some kind of museum in the back. Of course I'm looking for used SciFi books. They had a small selection of maybe six shelves of paperbacks. Most copies of the authors I'm interested in were books I have or have read. One of them was "Green Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson which I just started reading Sunday night. After leaving there I stopped into "Coffee By Design" for a dark roast Grande and took a seat to spend the rest of my lunch hour writing. When it's raining like it is I notice the Portland street people more than on a moderate weather day as a lot of people that like to get out and about don't when it's this wet. Several of the street folk asked for spare change including a couple of apparently able body young adults. I'm sure all of them have a reason, some better than others to be hitting up passerbyers for spare change. If it's because they've hit hard times, well and good. I hope they find themselves in better straits soon. If it was me could I find a means to prevent myself from following their course of action. I'd like to think so. As for those who can't or won't I at least hope there's a meal and a safe place to sleep tonight.

Casting a line in a stream

Carol's Uncle Melvin passed away today. Pictured to the left with baby Ian and Melvin's granddaughter Jeanne at his knee. He left behind his wife Carolyn, daughter Debbie and sons Doug, Scott and Lance including grand- and great-grandchildren. He worked for many years at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine. An avid fisherman he knew his way around all the streams nearby to Stockholm, Maine - even told me a secret or two about how to find a good spot to fish from. Anytime there was a get together Melvin was worth it for checking in with a few stories to swap and a number of below the radar quips. He'll be missed... but not by the fish!

morning mists hover
swirling water, hidden prize
baited hook dips low

The parts are there but they could probably work better

So now I've taken up with a personal trainer. There was a time when I thought that was never going to happen. In an effort to get some back pain relief through improved flexibility and an effective workout regiment the time has come after all. Tonight I had my second session with my nephew Mark who is a full-time certified PT. The first session was a fitness evaluation with a run through of various exercises. That was last Monday. Tonight was the program Mark put together for me and a quick run through of how to do those exercises. The program also includes a nutrition plan and stretching routine. All down on paper. Now for the next ten weeks it's up to me to dig into it after which we reevaluate and change up the program. There is a lot to think about in the package Mark gave me, all very doable I just need to wrap my head around it and bend time to fit it all together properly.

Put the brush down and nobody gets hurt

A miserable, cold, rain settled into region today, great weather for finishing our painting project. Yesterday we patched and prime coated the wall in the livingroom. After that we went to Elaine and Steve's for supper where we celebrated their son Mark's 28th birthday.

Mark, his son Brock, Carol and Lois, sitting around the table talking while waiting for cake and ice cream.

So today, once breakfast, the Sunday paper and a few odds and ends were out of the way Carol and I got to it. The painting itself went well, the cleanup and getting things back where they belonged seemed to take the most out of me.

Best of all, it's finished.

Picasso we're not

But painters we are or at least we're painting. For the last four weekends Carol and I have been working our way through the upstairs hallway, down the stairwell and today we started painting the livingroom. A project long over due. Last time we painted these areas with the stairwell being the trickiest part because of the high ceiling we rented a wonderful bit of scaffolding which allow us to stagger the end pieces so we could work over stairs. After looking it up online Carol found that Lowes sold the same type and we decided just to buy it. So now we're the proud owner of are own scaffolding. That brings us to what I hope is the final weekend of this project. We've been very please with the results, much lighter color of paint this time. It's good practice, in a couple of weeks or so we'll be painting some of the rooms at my mother's house. Maybe she'll give a recommendation if we decide to go into business for ourselves.

Comfort reading

Non-readers of science fiction may find this hard to believe but it is possible to experience comfort reading in the sci-fi genre. Much like "comfort food", settling in with this book I found myself in a comfortable place with people I know. The story Orson Scott Card has written brings the reader back to a character that even after four books the last of which concluded the story line of Ender Wiggin allows the reader to return to a stage of his life left open to explore. You know of sequels and prequels, well this I guess would be a midquel. The story of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin begins in the book, Ender's Game, as a mere child, a genius by birth is trained to be a leader at "Battle School" and eventually saves the human race from annihilation by a bug race called the formics. Originally the next three books (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind) pick up with Ender many years after the war as an adult. "Ender in Exile" fills in his story between the Battle School and his life later on and quite a story it is. While reading I was constantly aware of how much richer a character Card was making Ender beyond what he already was. The thing to me that stands out the most about Card's writing is the amount of depth he provides in the many of the characters he creates. This I've known through the twelve books I've read of his and so it continued with Exile. The other day while I was eating lunch at a little sandwich shop/cafe in Portland reading the Afterwood of the book, which Card wrote to explain the writing of the book. A woman that worked there saw the title and mentioned she had just finished reading Ender's Game and asked how Ender in Exile was. I told her I thought it was terrific but recommended she read the other stories first as being able to come back to Ender's life after the adventures of those later books had a provided certain amount of satisfaction. I wouldn't call this a review, just trying to describe it as an experience in reading. The Ender series also includes a number of side stories of other characters from Ender's Game so there's a lot of ground to cover.