duck-shaped pain

I walked at least a mile every day (two on Thursday: a mile near my house, and then a mile out in the dirt near the Book Cliffs with my dog). A mile isn't much, and even at a leisurely pace, it only takes me about 20 minutes to complete. But I'm starting small, since I haven't consciously set out to exercise daily for quite some time. I've been doing one lap of the same route every day: I take a left from my house and go down the street for a quarter-mile, to where the road ends and intersects the major street that drunken teens take out to government land , where they drink, make out and shoot off guns. I turn around and walk the same quarter-mile back to my house, passing five houses with their Christmas lights still up, a photo Christmas card that got blown to the side of the road (Merry Christmas from the Gordons, it says, under a picture of three smiling toddlers), and a field full of horses. I continue on the same road, past my house, for another quarter mile, past several barking dogs, an empty field that I used to explore in when I was a kid, and a daycare center (a recent addition to the street). I stop where the road ends, right next to the house that belongs to the people that own the llamas. There is a large hill of dirt in the middle of their yard, and always, always, there is a llama standing on it. A different llama each time. Some times the llamas get free, but don't really go far, and usually they lay down in the road to take a nap. I turn around and head the quarter-mile back home, past fields which will be full of corn come summer, ditches where I picked asparagus as a kid, and several very, very large trees. By this time I am cold: it has been very chilly here this week, and even with wool peatcoat + hat + two scarves + wool socks + gloves, I am grateful to get inside.

I read a lot, reading Rebecca Solnit's A Book of Migrations (finished) and Wanderlust (partially through), The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by John McWhorter; The Landscape of History: How Historians Map The Past by John Gaddis (sort of for school) and A'r'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South by Deborah White (also for school). I also looked through a book I bought on preparing for the GRE. I usually don't read so much in a week, but with nothing else to do, and little money to spend, it seemed the natural choice of pastime. The downside of this is that each book, interesting in its own right, has become part of a larger book in my mind, indistinguishable from the others. I'll remember some idea or image I read and be unable to place which book it came from. One of the books (the White book) I have to write a paper on in a few weeks (I think: my source for this is another student, not the professor, and I'll find out for sure on Monday), so I'm going to have to go through it again and deal with it as an individual, instead of a small part of the huge cloud of words I spent my week in.

I made sausage, white bean, mustard green, tomato and pasta soup for dinner on Tuesday. I was without any onions when I made it, so I was in a small part worried about the soup's eventual outcome: onions seem key to such a dish. It turned out very good, though. It was rich and spicy, from the crushed red pepper I added and the spices already added to the sausage. I ate it with roasted garlic bread which just came from the grocery store: it was just been baked when I was there, and it was steaming up the cellophane window in the paper bag in which it resided. Usually, hot bread at the store = insipid, overly chewy bread upon arrival at home, no matter how good it smells. But this bread was much better than supermarket bread should be: it remained crispy throughout its brief lifespan, and was very, very garlicky.

Work update: The Project, the anticipated event that will turn The Employer's fortunes around and put us all back to work again, has been delayed. Again. So, no work for me this week, or next week. Of course, I didn't hear this from The Employer's mouth -- he has yet to even contact me. No, I heard it from my no-bullshit, straight-talking co-worker L., who came over to borrow something. I'll just start calling him instead: he's always the one person who will tell you what's going on when no one else will.

previous | next