Scattered Thoughts

We're back. We drove to Arizona to see Mr. Honey's family. Yes, we saw "Cars" before we went. But we didn't take the I-40/Route 66 road. We went the southern route. It's very similar, but fewer tourist traps. I have several things to share, but I'm very tired, so I am going to jumble them together pell-mell and hope they are understandable.

We did a new thing on this road trip, and it worked pretty well. All of us in our family are voracious readers, and we all take way too many books on car trips. Often our books suffer from being stuffed between seats or underneath them, or even underfoot while in the van. (The worst. I hate that.) And this time we wanted to take our hymnals so we could have some family singing on the way there and back, and there was no way I was going to allow the hymnals to be subjected to such abuse.

So I pulled out a nice-sized, rather shallow box in which to "shelve" the books. It was just big enough to hold one layer of two rows of books with their spines exposed, and the five hymnals stacked one on top of another with spines alternating. Each person was allowed three books out at a time, and every time we stopped for a meal, whoever wanted to rotate their books did so. The hymnals stayed with me any time they were out and we were not singing. It worked very well until I got tired on the trip home and kept forgetting to ask if anyone wanted to rotate books.

I finished a couple of my books. First, the Winston Churchill biography. I have read two Leaders in Action books now, and I think I really like them. I don't agree with everything, but I like the format of telling the story of the person's life in the first part, and then highlighting different leadership principles with anecdotes and quotes from the person in the second part. Very effective, and I do enjoy the intro to original sources.

I also finished Sidetracked Home Executives, and just spent a couple of hours setting up my dailies and weeklies in my file. I hope it will go well. I really like the safety valve on this system. File it and forget it. If I don't get to something, I just note that I didn't get to it and file it to the next day/week/month. Then I can make those jobs priority the next time they come up. Ebb and flow, just like life. I like that. There are some cards called 'personals' where you put things you do for yourself, or out-of-the-house things, or things you just enjoy doing, and those will be the nice rewards we sprinkle throughout. Ah, the idealistic honeymoon days of a new system.

I also finished Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. It was very interesting and I am still chewing on it, so do not want to comment yet. I do like the idea of balancing "kitchen service" with "living room intimacy". She talks about the ebb and flow of life too.

And we saw some interesting clouds on our trip. The sky is so big when there aren't many hills or trees. We have had a cloud poster up in our home for the past couple of months, so we were prepared when, in New Mexico, we saw two separate lenticular clouds above two of the rare mountains (Mr. Honey said they were merely hills). Also, the day before we left on our trip, we were coming back from Wal-mart and noticed mammatus clouds above us, indicating "very active cumulonimbus in latter stages of development." Thankfully we got home before the heavens opened up.

I cannot travel in the west without listening at least once to Aaron Copland. We did remember to play him, but not until we were stuck in traffic in Phoenix. It was still somewhat effective.

We listened to Rakkety Tam read by the author and a full cast, complete with music and accents. I have decided I just cannot listen to that kind of thing. The brogues were so thick I couldn't understand what they were saying, especially not over the noise of the van. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it, though.

We went to a spring training baseball game between the Texas Rangers and the SF Giants while we were on vacation, and Triss caught a home run ball hit by Barry Bonds. Mr. Honey tells me he is about to become the all-time home run hitter in major league baseball history. So I guess she has a little bit of history-in-the-making now. He wouldn't sign it, though. It is his policy not to sign anything. (She didn't actually catch it-- it landed about two yards away from her and she got to it before any of the starstruck young boys with their baseball gloves. Made her quite the momentary celebrity of the cheap seats.)

We also went bowling one morning, and I got a higher score than Mr. Honey. That is the first time I have ever beat him bowling. He is very good at it. For some reason my mind was really communicating with my arm and wrist, and I kept rolling strikes. I only beat him by one point, but still. Like I said, it has never happened before. I think it might have been the peach gummies we got from Cracker Barrel. Yum. They taste so good, they've got to be good for something.

We came home the night before our annual church meeting (a little planning glitch on my part), and so have spent the past few days having glorious singing, and listening to some edifying messages.

Unfortunately, Mr. Honey missed all but one service, as he is sick. I think he has the flu and possibly bronchitis. Cornflower and Triss succumbed as well and missed church this morning. I am not sure what the next few days will look like, but I have a feeling there will be a lot of quiet and some cuddling and hopefully no one else falling sick. Quiet is nice, but I want everyone well.

I appreciate the suggestions about how to get the bookcovers posted in my sidebar. I can tell I am going to have to sit down and really play with the template for a little while before I figure out how to post a list of pictures to the sidebar. Unless some other Blogspot blogger has already figured it out. And wants to share. Hint, hint. I already have a Library Thing account, but I only have two books listed. I need to go to Amazon and figure out what an affiliate is.