Got Books?

Pssst! Lady, I got books. Want to see?

Stacks!

We get a day together! Its raining so no books and no wood!

Polish that Pen and Shine them Bells!

I'm cooking Spanish Lentils and with the wood stove on listening to long dark commentary. The morning has a chill on me and I'm not running about the book store like a nutter.

I booked my Ceremony in Toronto City Hall.

I've booked a bank appointment and I've looked into renewing my passport. I might have to apply for a new one, it seems. A name change means I need to apply for a new one. What fun!

In retrospect I should have waited until after I'd renewed my passport to book my flight to Scotland. It might mean I have to cancel. Then rebook of course. I want to spend as much time with Will as I can. It might also mean I have to spend a night in Toronto when I do my passport so it goes through quickly. I understand that the Post/mail is good, but I have some urgency to my plans if my return date is the 20th of January.

Paper work is my favourite! :D

Unrelated. I'm still collecting books to bring back with me. I had a wild list from before. Its very long and I don't think my bag can hold so much. Not unless I want to return naked.

Fun fact! I am less tired, at long last. I realized how emotionally draining my summer has been. The energy I put in this summer compared to the one before was a lot more. There were more emotional problems it seemed, and no reprieve from it. No matter the sleep, I could not recover.

I figured out now that reading is helping me recover in ways that the Long Dark wasn't. Forced upon  a narrative and making an easy emotional investment along with it being one of my favourite pass times seems to be lifting the evening exhaust. I'm becoming me again by doing old habits I'd given up or stopped because the outside influences were taking so much from me. Next time I'll know how to shut off better!,

Also I am looking forwards to winter!

Books and Polishing

Spent a portion of my evening polishing the halter. Encrusted in shit, I spent two to three hours rubbing and scrubbing with leather cleaner until it shone new. Only things left were a few scratches from being on my horse's face.

Also, and un related to horse tack polishing... I'm getting married.

Other than that I've been working at the book store and pondering. I've started reading again and starting to build the momentum towards two books at once. One book will be fiction and the other not. I've finished one whole book, which was something I never seemed to be able to do at the hostel. I was interrupted so much that it felt as though there was no point, so I would just go wolf hunting instead in the Long Dark. Yellow eyed bastards.

Please, let us have your moldy, smoke riddled books. That is the thing we want with our reading, tar smoke. 

Anyway the book was Scarlett Thomas's Our Tragic Universe, It was dense, let me tell you. Not for the light reader. It almost came of pretentious, and yet I enjoyed tthe author bouncing writing ideas off me. I recommend her End of Mr. Y for a Neil Gaimen esque fantasy, or the Tragic Universe for something more philosophical.

Books have weighed on me. There's something different about being surrounded by books. For someone like me who can hoard and collect, a book store is a good place to practice abstinence? I suppose that's the right word. I want to fill my shelves and get that beautiful pagey smell wafting under my noses when I least suspect it. They sooth me.

There is no book store in Fort William. There is. Its a new one. Blech. I like verity. Not a amazonian suggestion. I like looking at a hundred thousand spines and trying to decide which one will hold the pages that spark fresh ideas. The adventure. The various styles and qualities. I have a small history book collection in Canada, but its a good one, built by being meticulous about my history books (and literature for that mater).

I'm going to build a collection over yoder so I'll post the list of what I'm after bellow.
As a note, some of these are not always going to be achievable

- Peter the Great, by Robert Massier
- King Death (nf)
- Salem Possessed
- Guns, Germs and Steel
- Collapse
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holms.
- Horse in the City
- Wolf Moon, Charles De Lint
- The Hobbit
- Dragonbane + Dragonshadow
- Black Beauty
- The Kalevala
- Basket Case
- What is History?
- Call of the Wild/White Fang
- Wolf country (?)
- How the West was Won, Lou Cameron
- A History of Scotland

Post Cards from Europe

I've found some postcards I received a few years ago from a school friend travelling in Europe. During a bleak year in a mindbogglingly boring line of work, letters and postcards were an enormous source of fresh air for me. I wanted to share some of them with you and thank Matt for his cards!

I'd Love an Old Camera

Back on the Farm! And the Coos are oot!