Content

Thursday night when I came home there was a bud vase with two roses in it by my place at the dining room table, chocolate hearts on my desk, and Bob was starting dinner. He was cooking a steak outside for himself, and I had ravioli with tomato sauce. We had a nice dinner; fortunately, Dinah waited until we were finished to knock over the vase. I was sitting at the computer checking email and suddenly thought, you know, I should probably move that vase, when it crashed to the table.

It didn't break, just sent water everywhere. They can't seem to resist flowers, and I think Dinah was especially intrigued by the eucalyptus that was also in the bouquet. It's sad, but every time I get flowers, they have to sit on the kitchen counter so that if (when!) they're overturned, less damage is done.

Friday night was our traditional Thank God it's Friday Chinese Extravaganza at the grocery store, and Saturday night he made mushroom omelettes with hollandaise. I told him it was pretty nice having my own personal chef.

Lately I find I require three specific things in order to be content (apart from Bob, the cats, money, shelter and food, of course): I need to have a good audio book to listen to during my commute, I need to have a good book that I can pick up in the evening and read, and I need to have a knitting project already started that I don't have to think about.

The audio book thing is sometimes a problem. I don't buy them--they're way too expensive--but check them out from the library, so the selection is often sparse. And I'm reaching the end of my tried and true: the Sandford Prey series, John Grisham's books, Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series. Every once in awhile I find something else interesting, but these are the best. I scour the library for new ones that I haven't heard; if I've already read the book, that's fine, because unless it's a very new one, I won't remember it well enough to matter.

Right now I'm listening to Night Prey, which is great, and then I've got James W. Hall's Buzz Cut in the trunk, but I don't know whether I'll like that one or not. I'll just have to see. I've read the book, but I just never know whether a book will translate well into audio, or whether I'll like the reader; I can't remember now who it is. George Guidall, maybe, who is a great reader, but unfortunately too tied to the Tony Hillerman books for me. When I listen to book he's reading, I keep expecting Officer Chee or Joe Leaphorn to pop in.

And the reading books have been something of a problem lately. I've started several and just couldn't get into them. I hate that. It makes me feel unsettled. I guess I'll just keep trying, and something will surely click for me sooner or later. I went to the library yesterday and checked out about a dozen books; some of them look promising, anyway. Tomorrow I'm going to start Michael Swanwick's Bones of the Earth, which is an expansion of his short story Scherzo with Tyrannosaur, which I liked, but there again, short stories don't always translate well into novels. I guess I'll find out.

The knitting, though, has been going pretty well. I've been knitting a series of scarves for Christmas gifts for next year, and I've done a good job of ordering yarn ahead of time, so I just finish one and start a new one. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I finish this series, although that will certainly be awhile.