Lately...

I was lucky enough to have a five day weekend starting last Thursday. I had worked the previous weekend and am generally over full time hours anyways (unless we're on call for reference, we generally make up our own schedule, which usually gets out of hand with meetings, programming, etc.) so I had the time. It has been a great 5 days of catching up on reading, baking, and trying new things.

For example:

I read: I finally finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, which came highly recommended. It was really good, but I don't think I was fully present for that read. I also read about 150 pages of Villette (less than 100 pages to go and loving it!) and also finished A Wrinkle in Time, which is one of my favorite books. I've decided to re-read all of L'Engle's children's books this year. My current read is The Ladies of Grace Adieu (short stories) by Susanna Clarke.

I baked/cooked: cookies and cream mini-cheesecakes, homemade doughnuts, Lobster Colorado, etc. All were very good, but now that I'm sitting in a canola-oil smelly house right now, I'm kind of regretting the doughnuts.

I tried: cross-country skiing. This was my first time skiing... ever. My parents never took me as a kid, and I was not about to learn how to downhill ski with 3 year olds skiing circles around me. I figured that even level skiing would be a bit easier (knowing full and well that it is quite a workout). We went with some friends who do this often, but who are also relaxed about the sport. I fell twice going downhill (and once going uphill) but finally got used to the weight distribution and gliding towards the end. Having special tracks in the snow helped a ton and being in Wyoming at the time didn't hurt either. It wasn't crowded at all. We all spent some time in Laramie after the skiing, which was cool, since our friends had previously lived there. We went two days ago, and I'm still sore... ouch!

Today, the library is closed for President's Day, so I'm trying to cook for the week, make sure the house can survive the upcoming work week, and catch up on my knitting. These next few weeks (okay, through the first part of April) are going to be immensely crazy. I will update when I can.