Misfits, a walk in the park, a Month in the Country

Out early Thursday morning before the heat arrived, I did a walk I haven't done for a while, across to the park.

It involves crossing another development, climbing up a little slope and then you're on the perimeter path.  Very pretty, interesting trees, quite a few planted since I was last here, plenty of friendly early morning walkers out, and both further and with a higher degree of difficulty (!) than my pond walk.

That was a good feeling, because it really was a pain free walk despite bits of climbing, then home to feel smug.

And I've been emptying the kitchen bit by bit, no need for weight exercises, swinging all kinds of appliances and lugging crates and dishes round two corners, then the shelves they were on 

Misfits arrived around noon, so that was more weight exercises.

Canned goods for the food pantry, bread because I'm operating field-kitchen style and not baking, that's my story, beautiful brown free range eggs, olive oil because I'm nearly out, surprising how much I get through, yum plums, vital yogurt and equally vital chocolate cherries. 

Good food and walking are two mainstays around here.

That and endless entertainment from neighbors, several visits from Gary, watering my outdoor plants,  conferring about hearing aids, he's finally going for it, flowering shrubs, his speed crazed vacation on mountain roads, loved it, one visit from another neighbor about her health issues and where was my car and her cat's arthritis. Never a dull moment.

The heat set in again Thursday, so the afternoon was about being indoors reading King short stories, and a murder mystery, Queen of Poisons.  And drawing, see below.

A____n does this weird thing when you keep reading your Kindle. They send all kinds of attempts to sell you books that may not suit you, but they'd like to move them. And if you mostly borrow books, they're really desperate to make a sale. 

All kinds of books appear on your screen, some you'd like but not for that money,  all the way to some they're practically paying you to take. 

This is how I now have a complete Turgenev, because the algorithm leapt from Writers and Lovers to there. It makes computer sense when you think about it, but zero literary sense. But at 99c minus my 99c credit, the price is right.

One summer as a teen I read all the Russian novels in my town library, in North Yorkshire typical freezing summer weather, great Carnegie endowed library. 

But they didn't have any Turgenev. There  were Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, but it's taken till now to check out Turgenev.

Which may prove that algorithms now and then work, or that some people don't know when to quit.  If I eat chocolate cherries while I read Turgenev I'll have a permanent sense memory, as I do of the winegums I ate through Great Expectations.

You really never know what branch lines my train of thought might find itself on.

But drawing continues. Here's today's drawing leaning again its model. In the background on the mantelpiece are the earlier ones you saw.

And here's a closeup 

Happy day everyone, stay cool or warm depending on which hemisphere you're reading from sez

Ted and Big Ursy