Good Morning!

It's been a whirlwind week for one convalescing from life-changing events. I started Monday back in the hospital for an outpatient procedure, then went right upstairs for chemotherapy. Wednesday it was back again to finish the treatment, and somewhere in there I got all my paperwork in order so I could go back to work.

Which I did on Thursday. There was no messing around; I did a full 8 hours on both Thursday and Friday, with a one hour (one-way) commute to even get to the office. I am pleased to report that I survived, and even felt like I was able to dive right in and get a couple of things accomplished, despite missing 5 consecutive weeks.

But that's not really my focus today. Five weeks out of work is a very long time, even in the middle of the summer. Because of what I had done, I couldn't drive and was very weak and winded even trying to walk for the first couple of weeks. Of course, I'm not allowed to immerse, so any water activities were out. About all I could to was sit in the sun and watch movies. Which I did, a lot.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I remembered that Waltham has an excellent library. A lifetime ago, or so it seems, I used to work on the next block; I was over there all the time at lunch, usually pawing through the CD collection looking for obscure jazz recordings. On my first day back, I picked up two books, and then proceeded to ravenously tear through them. I've always been a fast reader, and even going back so far as grade school, was always reading above my level. It was actually quite a revelation to go "old-school".

I've long coveted a Kindle, but with the way our economic situation is, this remains on the wish list. However, the last few books I read have been digital. I make use of Google Books online, and have read a few free and paid-for books so far this year while sitting in front of the computer.

But nothing can quite match that visceral feeling of wandering amongst the stacks, waiting for serendipity to strike, leafing through a page here, seeing a familiar title there, and being immersed in the way libraries always smell.

It might surprise some of you to learn that I'm a *ginormous* fan of Tom Clancy and the Jack Ryan universe. Back in the day, I would always skim through the bookstore looking for the latest, and I have most of the series. But alas, over time, I fell away from that and have missed the last couple. But again, thanks to the library, I'm catching up. "The Bear and the Dragon" is a massive, 1,000 page tome, which I thought was a bit ambitious when I took it out with another book. But the way Clancy writes, much of the first half goes very slowly, then at some point it goes "click" and is impossible to put down. That point came around page 490, and since it hit, I've been running almost a hundred pages a day on this.

But the way I read books....well, the other book I took out is also being read, and I have another one upstairs from my personal library that I peek at whenever I get tired of the two I have out. And I still have something I'm reading online, so I am reading four books concurrently right now. Fairly typical for me, a habit going back to at least Junior High School.

I'm sure there's a few books we all have on our "bucket list". For a number of years now, the top of my list has been Winston Churchill's The Second World War. A couple of family members have a stray volume or two, and even Google books doesn't carry all six books electronically. But in wandering around recently, I discovered that the Waltham Library has all six books in hardcover.

So once I finish with the two I've got, it's on to the next one.

We all move at 100mph these days....there's incessant beeping, clicking, ringing, and who knows what else. It's summer....why not go get a book today, and sit outside this evening in the shade and turn a page?