Sunday Salon: Shine on you crazy diamond

 Hello my long lost friends!  Yes I am officially back from my extended blogging vacation.  Kinda weird, me sitting down to write this Sunday rambling.  So I guess I need to get you all caught up on what I've been up to.  

Pretty much sloth is what I have been up to.  Reading-wise anyway.  I HAVE been reading, but sort of a meandering kind of reading.  Taking my time, indulging in longer audio reads and books that have been sitting on my shelves for awhile.  This may come back to haunt me, as now I have to keep up, but I'll give it my best shot.  

I've been seeing a lot of Oscar movies.  So expect some belated reviews of those over the next month or so.  I'm certainly not cutting edge at this point.  I apologize if you have heard enough about Les Miserables, for example, but I have to get it all off my chest.

The kids' business still keeps me running around like my hair is on fire.  My daughter made the track team, so she is participating in practice five days a week, and meets start on the 15th.  She is also on some crazy mission to hit something like 500 community service hours in high school, so she keeps cracking the whip on animal shelter volunteerism.  Ryan started wrestling, only to wrench his back all to hell, so now he is on drugs and in PT twice a week for who knows how long.

My LASIK-adjusted eyes have finally outgrown the procedure from a decade ago and I had to break down and get glasses.  Special way to make me feel old.

Still obsessively training for my half-marathon in a few weeks.  I am SO ready for this thing to happen.  I'm sick to death of getting up at 4:30 in the morning to run during the week. And my feet and left butt check hurt all the time. 

February is #shineon month, or in other words, when all of us apostles of Uncle Stevie read his early treasure "The Shining", hosted by Fizzy Jill.  (I'd add the link here but I'm having trouble calling up her website...I'm sure it is something I'm doing.)  And because she is Fizzy Jill, we get accessories and stuff.  (Note that I have my ORIGINAL Shining book from high school.  I have to show the back of the book because the front page was ripped off in some earlier fit of terror, or over-reading, or something.)  

I'm also happily participating in C.B. James' annual Double Dog Dare, where I read only my own books, with exceptions made only for book club reads.  I so look forward to this every year.  It has changed my life.  Speaking of reading my own stuff, I just had a huge purge of books from my shelves...over a hundred titles were quickly spirited off to the library.  

Right now I am really close to finishing Uncle Stevie's collection of short stories called "Night Shift".  My son the non-reader actually read this book and begged me to re-read it so we could have an educated and spirited discussion about each story.  I'm also within a few discs of finishing "Catherine the Great:  Portrait of a Woman" by Robert Massie on audio.  This was a big stretch for me...I am not a history buff.  But I have very much enjoyed this audio.  Fascinating stuff, with all these young, hunky "favorites" and beating up on Poland and being a badass type A woman of her time.

There are big plans brewing today for the Super Bowl, as well as animal shelter and some homework assistance squeezed in there for good measure.  Hope you all have a wonderful day.  I'm so glad to be back!