Saturday, November 2, 2013

Weather or not

Threatening sky
Although it rained on and off all night, I was pleased to see that it was not raining when I got to Boulevard Park, where the Fairhaven walking group was to meet this morning. At first I thought there might be just a few of us, but before we headed out for a nice five-mile walk this morning, more than a dozen, plus a few dogs, showed up. We knew that the weather was projected to deteriorate, but we hoped that it would wait until we were warm and dry inside the coffee shop.

We did get wet, but it wasn't awful, until I left to hurry home and change my clothes before meeting my friend Judy at the Pickford to see a movie. It was raining and blowing pretty hard by then, but the bad part was not finding a place to park nearby and having to walk three blocks to the theater. By then I was every bit as wet, even more so, than I was before I changed!

We went inside to enjoy a really wonderful music documentary, Muscle Shoals, about a little town in Alabama that was the birthplace of plenty of the music I listened to in the 1960s and 1970s. I didn't know anything about the place before I saw this, but the documentary was really interesting and very well done. The beauty of the town, which has the Tennessee River running through it, was simply breathtaking at times. I learned about Rick Hall, who started it all, and the Swampers, a group of musicians who backed up many of the great hits. They were all shown as they once were, as well as interviewed as the people they are now. Highly recommended.

And books! I've just finished Gulp by Mary Roach (Adventures on the Alimentary Canal) and The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. It never fails that I'll start to read a book from the library and one (or in this case, two) other books I've had on hold come into the library at the same time. So I put Gulp down so I could read the other two. I've read everything Lahiri has written and am obviously a fan. This book stayed with me for days as I continued to ponder the characters. Everything Mary Roach writes is funny and interesting, but Lahiri's book was also deeply satisfying.

The last one, which I'm still reading, is The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet. This fascinating true adventure story was written in 1961 by Blanchet, who put her five children on a 25-foot boat and explored the coastal waters of British Columbia every summer in the 1920s and 1930s. From the book jacket:
Acting single-handedly as skipper, navigator, engineer and of course mother, she saw her crew through exciting (and sometimes perilous) encounters with fog, rough seas, cougars, bears and whales, and did so with high spirits and courage.
I am enjoying her memoir and hope to find out, after I finish this book, whether any of her children grew up to write about how they experienced the same events. Oh, and one more thing: I found out about that huge pumpkin. I guessed that it weighs 315 pounds, but it turns out it is 685 pounds! I was nowhere close.
:-)

22 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if I'd trade weather today. We are getting heavy wet snow. It will change in a few hours to the dry snow.
    I'm watching for Mary Roach's book. I've heard her interviewed.
    Have you read Salt , Sugar and Fat? I'm looking for that one.
    Have a great evening and keep dry. I have to shovel a few more times today. I shovel often and find it easier.

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  2. 685 lbs! holy smokes! that is some heft! :)

    glad you had a walk - and got wetter after! just don't get sick. :)

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  3. oh that last book sounds rather delightful...i thirst for such an adventure...smiles....it was a beautiful day here today..i might have got a bit of a tan honestly....

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  4. That's a hefty pumpkin. I should try to read more books like you. However, I seem to focus only on books dealing with near death experiences, the last one being Alexander's Proof of Heaven, which you reviewed. As for exercise, I'll stick with dancing the hula. Lol. Stay well, DJan.

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  5. You keeps so busy whether you're on the move or reading. The Curve of Time sounds like a fine book. I'll keep an eye for it. Thanks.

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  6. I'm sorry for your misadventures with the weather, but you do live on the wet coast (or is it the west coast?) and should expect those sorts of things. (Explains my wife, who is from from Vancouver, Canada.) You did survive your outings, and that is good!

    I have not been reading much lately, other than on-line articles I find on the net. Now that things are more settled, I expect to get back to reading books. Nice touch for the winter, I think.

    Blessings and Bear hugs!

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  7. Sounds like a wonderful Saturday, rain soaked and all!
    WOWSER, on the pumpkin weight!
    I guess it's hard to guess the contents of the shell, hollow or full of stringy pumpkin slime & seed. I'm curious how thick the shell is, too. That's a lot of pumpkin. ☺

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  8. What a wonderful, albeit wet day.
    I have, and thoroughly enjoyed Stiff by Mary Roach. I will keep an eye out for Gulp.

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  9. I noticed 'Gulp' on the shelf at the library the other week - will note it down to put on hold.
    That must have been one very large pumpkin!
    Cathy

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  10. Now that is a lot of pumpkin pie!! My goodness. I can't imagine.

    Those books sound pretty good dear DJan. You have the most interesting posts...I so enjoy coming by.

    Now, just make sure you drink plenty of fluids and take a zinc supplement...don't want you catching any nasty bug after all the wet and then going into a theater that always seems so cold in the first place.

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  11. That a pumpkin can be misjudged in weight is no surprise

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  12. I am impressed with the weight of the pumpkin - lotta pies there :)
    Nice to have paw paws on your hike and our weather was supposed to snow last night - rained - and today sunny, cold n beautiful - more yard work to be done. I shall check out The Curve Of Time - have a great day.

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  13. More books for my growing list! And that pumpkin....!!

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  14. Which Lahiri book would you recommend I read first? She'll be a new author for me.

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  15. I will look for The Curve of Time, it sounds like something I would like to read.
    I saw a weather forecast for your area for November it said wetter and colder than normal..we are just colder than normal. Makes me want to move south:(

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  16. What a wet day! But the movie sounds very interesting and the books sound good, too. :)

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  17. I thought about that pumpkin a few times over the week and wondered if it was between 500 and 700 pounds. It was - just barely.
    I haven't seen many movies lately. We did go see 'Enough Said" because it got good reviews, but we found it a bit flat and disappointing. I am lucky to get 20 minutes of reading in with my current book, the latest Elizabeth George mystery. Maybe this week....

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  18. That was one big pumpkin but I would not have guessed it was that heavy either. We had heavy rain Saturday morning then the wind arrived. There are not many leaves left here.

    I have been to Muscle Shoals several times many years ago. I was living in GA in the 70s and the studio was well known. Some of my favorite groups recorded there. I'm glad you liked the movie, I have it on my wishlist on Amazon when it becomes available for streaming.

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  19. Best that you don't read my post of today as the weather difference is extreme! Thanks for the book reviews as I tend to read recommended books. I'm on book 4 of the Game of Thrones series and I'm enjoying it immensely.

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  20. We had lots of sun this weekend. And I added an extra mile onto one of my hikes. In another 100 years I'll be able to hike with you DJan.

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  21. I'll look up that last one on my Nook. Sounds like my kind of thing though I don't qualify as a mom....

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  22. 685 pounds??? Good grief! That's amazing. You're really getting a lot of reading done. The last fun book I read was Michael Crichton's Micro. Actually he started it and someone else finished it. I can't remember if I already told you about it. I loved it because it was set in Hawaii.

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