Tag: Reading

Break Time · Life Through My Windows · Morning

Rain, Go Away

E.W. BennefeldLeave a comment
Photo by Macro Photography on Pexels.com

through the night, thunderstorms rumbled overhead….
grateful for the leaf

Finally got to sleep, closer to morning than evening. Enjoyed rereading the end of L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s Isolate. (The first of a new series … the third novel comes out in August..) As with Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Clifford D. Simak, I would buy Modesitt’s without knowing anything about the story. We awakened to partly cloudy skies, and now the noontime sun!

The Scampers have eaten theirr breakfast. Time for a noontime nap. .The clean-up trucks are almost done with pick-up on our block. I may nap with the Scampers while the other of us eats beef stew at his eatery of choice.

January leaves with snow The end of a long week | #WeekendCoffeeShare on 22 Jan. 2021
Break Time · Coffee Time · Life Through My Windows · Nattering · Personal · Social Link-Ups · Writing

The end of a long week | #WeekendCoffeeShare on 22 Jan. 2021

E.W. Bennefeld10 Comments

Well, almost the end of the long week.

Welcome! This is a decompression day (2nd of 2 for the week.) I forgot I was to get up and make breakfast, and so I am eating now, before lunchtime catches up with me. There’s v. dark chocolate, mixed nuts (with or without peanuts), Toddy coffee (of course), and fresh mozzarella cheese, and also filtered water, cold for drinking or ready to heat for tea.

It was nice to visit the dentistry office, on Wednesday. Too long since Al and I last took the drive to Hawley. Next month, if all is well, I get to meet with the optometrist, also. I’ve a small cavity starting on the gum line, so hope to go back, sometime after the eye exam, if the weather and pandemic cooperate.

Wednesday evening, I attended the free Poetry Heals workshop via Zoom, which was fantastic and just what I need. Listening, being heard, and writing poems together. Yesterday, a lot of notes for more poems and resting. Catching up on sleep. The Scampers and I also attended, via Zoom, the weekly noon Meeting for Worship for Healing.

We (the Scampers and I) awakened before the alarm went off. They had breakfast, but I had not. The nuts are good, and the chocolate was delicious. I’ve a Zoom meet-up scheduled for this afternoon with the four oldest siblings in the family. That would be the Bay area in California, eastern North Dakota, the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and Connecticut. I need to fit a lunch into the next hour.

Tomorrow noon, I will enjoy an hour’s Social gathering with Liz Danforth and friends via Zoom. This week, I have been rereading a 2-book story arc by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., comprising The Parafaith War and The Ethos Effect, both of which have informed my view on current U.S. events; Blood Banked: Stories from the Blood Verse, by Tanya Huff, in ebook format., so I can read them comfortably ; and I have just started rereading William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth: A Deep Map, which merges prose and prose poetry—quite addicting.

Twice, this past week, I got out into the snow-and-cold with the Scampers to take photographs. Hope you find something you like among them.

Poems that I wrote, this week: Winter Art,  Room Enough, and Winter Grass.

I hope to visit your blog for coffee, sometime over the weekend. Thanks for dropping by, here.

Hugs & much love,
Lizl

P.S. Natalie’s Weekend Coffee Share post for this weekend is here: Natalie the Explorer.

acquired from the weekendcoffeeshare post Sunday, 4 August ’19 #WeekendCoffeeShare
Life Through My Windows · Nattering · Nature · Personal · Social Link-Ups

Sunday, 4 August ’19 #WeekendCoffeeShare

E.W. BennefeldLeave a comment

Weekend Coffee Share is a time to take a break and catch up with old friends and new. The (virtual) teapot is hot, and there’s Toddy coffee to share, hot or cold.

This week has been disorganized. I have not gotten much done. Lots of time with the Scampers and much more with taking photographs. The pollen counts have been very high, as also the humidity and temperatures, and so I have found myself going out into the yard to take photographs numerous times during the day. Too exhausting to exercise and totally not hungry, which hasn’t helped.

Scampers: We would like to go inside, again, please.

Walking around has helped to keep my legs from swelling. As with last week, I slept a lot, too, and have been reading in Fukuyama’s Identity, Purnell’s A Woman of No Importance, and added a rereading of Cameron’s The Sound of Paper.

I am not taking part in the next of the college book club’s group book discussion; they’ve chosen A Gentleman in Moscow, and after reading the summary, I would as soon not. Especially since my sister from the East Coast will be arriving in a week. My husband will be busy with ham radio activities with some folks from our club, and that will give me time and space to do more sorting, tossing, and organizing before she gets here.

I have taken a variety of photographs during the past week. I’ve entirely too many and must find a better way to organize the files (since spring of 2003) so that I can once more find what I’m looking for.

 

Blue Wild Flax Flower
Coreopsis Buds
Black-eyed Susan
Raindrop
Grasshopper in the Hedge
King on the Hill

 

 

Best wishes for you as you begin new week!

Lizl

P.S. My thanks to Allison, our host, whose Weekend Coffee Share blog post and Link Party can be found HERE at Eclectic Alli’s blog!

New Year’s Day Afternoon
Afternoon · Break Time · Nattering · Personal · Updates

New Year’s Day Afternoon

E.W. Bennefeld1 Comment

photo through the window, looking east
Looking Out

Mostly Cloudy/-6°F (-21°C). One degree warmer than our forecast high temperature, here in eastern North Dakota USA.

If you’d dropped in, this afternoon, I would offer to heat a second cup of Toddy coffee. I’ve also gluten-free veggie crackers and hot bread cheese (leipäjuusto) to offer. The Scampers occupy the loveseat. Thadd is sound asleep right across from me, and Charlie has been looking out through the curtains, but no cars are passing by for him to woof at.

I made some major changes at the end of the year, canceling both of my domains and Personal plans with WordPress, and so they have reverted to the generic [myblogname].wordpress.com. That means that the [myblogname] dot net URLs no longer work. My blogs, all of them but my journal.thewrittenword.net, have been drastically underused. That may have something to do with my tendency to, periodically, delete them and start over from scratch. #SorryNotSorry

It has occurred to me that I have not put together a chapbook of my poetry since 1990 or 1991, which I had printed locally and then hand sold, netting the grand sum of a little more than $200 after expenses. Also did special editions for individuals to give as gifts to a friend, to a child, &c. So much cozier than what I imagine working through a publishing company might be. Thinking about going through the Quilted Poetry blog and weeding out, editing, and such. Reorganizing to some sort of a plan.

That reminds me of the frustrations of computer programming. One runs out of coding projects before one runs out of the joy, and then is stuck with revisions, updates, and troubleshooting—none of which is fun—and the joy only returns with the next new project. It didn’t take long for me to switch to operations, which had a routine but also many day-to-day variables. 

I have creamed the WordPress version update at The Written Word, but I have also upgraded to a new hosting plan, which will triple the web space. That was the domain name for my business starting in 1988, about three and a half years after I left corporate IT to do freelance writing (job search, mostly) and academic style/ESL editing and consulting. Eventually, I became absorbed in my own writing (and in photography), and so arriving at retirement four years ago was a good thing. The demands on my energy couldn’t sustain dealing with the radical bifurcation.. The last two years, I took on no new projects or clients, and just scheduled my long-time customers for their routine work. I do miss them, but I am much more comfortable now and able to do things at my own pace—a flexible schedule.

I have a nice metaphorical stack of ebooks to read and some more preorders to look forward to.

My bread-cheese breakfast is wearing off, and so I must seek out a proper meal before the day runs out.

Thanks for stopping by!

Lizl

 

 

Afternoon · Break Time · Cooking · Hobbies · Life Through My Windows · Personal · Social Link-Ups

July 13: Ups and Downs | Weekend Coffee Share

E.W. Bennefeld3 Comments

large and small, brown teapots

Welcome to my Weekend Coffee Share! There is Toddy coffee, if you like, but also a pot of Oolong tea, which I have been enjoying, today. The week has been…awkward. My husband was coming down with something, I don’t know what, and became quite ill, Wednesday evening. Much better, today, and so he was up and around, finally going out to his workshop to build tables for the ham radio room. Things come to a grinding halt in the house when one of us is ill. Fortunately, that is not often.

During the week, to get out of the house (out of the way), the puppies and I spent a lot of time in the back yard, where I pulled weeds and took a lot of photographs. I also put in much more time on the exercise bike in the gazebo, most days, and spent more time there.

Almost every day, I post some favorite photographs from the morning shoot (flowers, wildflowers, miscellanea) in the back yard at the JPG Mag web site. This week and last, I got some really good pictures, and I was nominated for “Member of the Week”. Pleased to say that I was selected, today (selections are made on Fridays), and there is an announcement post HERE with a few of my photographs, a snapshot of me, and a link to my photo gallery.

This was a more active week than usual, although I did not get out of the house after Monday evening, when we attended a visitation at a funeral home in the next town.  The brother of one of our good friends died; my husband knew his mother, who lived in the same town when they were young. There was a great gathering of relatives and friends.

I did not write a lot of poetry, this week. (See photographs.) But I did manage to do one for the Ronovan Writes Haiku weekly challenge. It was odd. Based on a stray train of thought that seemed improbable until I got into it.

These past few weeks seemed unwelcoming, and so I tried to concentrate on activities close at hand. Things within reach that I could actually do something with/about. While I was on the exercise bike, this week, I read three novels in a favorite fantasy series by Sharon Shinn. I have read through a number of her series, this year. Her series and L. E. Modesitt’s novels are the most rereadable, right now. I am not in the mood for Pern (McCaffrey) or military SF. I did find a new book in Sheila Connolly’s Relatively Dead series. That was wonderful. And I pre-ordered Murder at the Mansion, which is next on my to-be-read list and was just released.

My blood pressure is still low enough that I’m not to worry about it, and I had to use my nebulizer, last week, but I suspect my blood sugar is doing better because of the increased exercise and decreased stress.

I don’t know what I can blame the disjointedness of my thoughts. Probably thinking about too many things at the same time. Thanks for the company, this evening.

Best wishes for your week!
Lizl

Note: Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Eclectic Alli. Her post for this week is HERE, and the InLinkz link also can be found on that page where you’ll find other participants in this week’s Weekend Coffee Share.

Break Time · Good Night · Nattering · Social Link-Ups

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Friday Night

E.W. Bennefeld1 Comment

Not Quite Ready, Yet

Thank you for joining me for a coffee break! The week has been long, and I am looking forward to a quiet weekend with cool and rain. On Wednesday, we navigated through the street construction projects to my clinic for my six-month check-up. (We did the same on Monday to get the blood testing done.) Everything seems to be maintaining or improving. My A1C reading was up a tenth of a percent, but we had reduced my medications by a third, six months ago, so that was good. Maintaining my weight. After the run-in with allergies, this spring, I am able to return to aerobic exercise. That is, I can pedal and breathe at the same time. Twenty-six miles on the exercise bike, this week.

On the way into the clinic, we saw a cloud to the south that showed rainbow colors on its edge. Quite colorful and well defined…which is not well captured by the photographs I took before we had to go inside.

Rainbow Colors

I have enjoyed taking photographs of the flowers, this week, and reading several books. I put aside New York to Nome: The Northwest Passage by Canoe to read L. E. Modesitt, Jr.’s latest Recluse novel, Outcasts of Order. Enjoyed it and plan to read it again in a couple of days, when I will be able to pick up on more of the details and integrate the story in my mind with the previous books in the series.

My sister-in-law, my youngest brother’s wife, is under hospice care. I would like to get to the care facility. Not sure if my coughing and sneezing are allergies or another cold, right now; I hesitate to bring fresh germs into that setting. The other sister-in-law who is local did make it over there, a couple of days ago.

I am thinking that with all the personal, family, and external turmoil, I need to take some time off to just read and garden and unwind. Al is having a good time of building and painting, and now planning furniture to build to fit out his new workshop. A good time, a happy time to share together. Trouble and worry are continuing, but they can be laid aside. The world’s troubles are much larger than me. I must pay attention to the moment and the needs of the people whose lives mesh with mine.

The hour is late. Midnight, already! I still have to prepare and eat one more meal before my day can end. Al is heading off to his computer/sitting room to watch the end of his last television show for the evening.

Thanks for listening! I look forward to reading your Weekend Coffee Share post tomorrow.

Best wishes for your weekend and the new week!
Lizl

Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Allison, whose site is eclecticali.wordpress.com; her coffee share post is at the top of the blog. The InLinkz link is HERE! You’ll find links to other people taking part in Weekend Coffee Share. –Lizl