Lovely and Productive Summer Day
Today was good. On the school front I both: 1) wrote my notebook entry on Silas Marner, focusing on the way Godfrey's marital partners seemed to parallel and diverge from George Eliot/Marian Evan's common-law husband; and 2) re-read (it's been almost three years) John Stuart Mill's "What Is Poetry" in preparation for my informal presentation scheduled for Wednesday.
A dear old friend of mine came through Missoula and I spent my early evening with her and her 18-month-old daughter. The Iron Horse where we had dinner serves a fabulous Spicy Tandoori Salad. After dinner we took a long walk, passing a wedding reception at the bandstand area of Caras Park where we got to watch from the Higgins Street Bridge as the bride and groom danced their first dance on the lawn while their guests blew bubbles. Our walk ended at the Big Dipper with a maple walnut cone for me and a dish of yellow cake with rainbow sprinkles for friend and daughter.
And then there were several hours of research reading for Geohexaes. I like to spend study and writing time at the Break Espresso, just down the street from where shadowhelm hangs out, at Liquid Planet (although we're rarely doing our coffee house writing at the same time, and I doubt I'd let her get anything done if we were in the same place). Fortuitously tonight, I met one of their baristas who asked me on my third or so refill of tea what I was up to; he was interested in hearing what my novel was about and was quite excited to tell me that he'd worked in Crystal Caverns in SD and that I could feel free to ask him questions. He also corrected me about which kind of acid formed caves (which I had just read moments before and already gotten the names mixed up). I found a number of interesting facts in my reading, but I'm most excited about the story/world details that suggested themselves to me as I was reading than I am about any of the concrete information.
A dear old friend of mine came through Missoula and I spent my early evening with her and her 18-month-old daughter. The Iron Horse where we had dinner serves a fabulous Spicy Tandoori Salad. After dinner we took a long walk, passing a wedding reception at the bandstand area of Caras Park where we got to watch from the Higgins Street Bridge as the bride and groom danced their first dance on the lawn while their guests blew bubbles. Our walk ended at the Big Dipper with a maple walnut cone for me and a dish of yellow cake with rainbow sprinkles for friend and daughter.
And then there were several hours of research reading for Geohexaes. I like to spend study and writing time at the Break Espresso, just down the street from where shadowhelm hangs out, at Liquid Planet (although we're rarely doing our coffee house writing at the same time, and I doubt I'd let her get anything done if we were in the same place). Fortuitously tonight, I met one of their baristas who asked me on my third or so refill of tea what I was up to; he was interested in hearing what my novel was about and was quite excited to tell me that he'd worked in Crystal Caverns in SD and that I could feel free to ask him questions. He also corrected me about which kind of acid formed caves (which I had just read moments before and already gotten the names mixed up). I found a number of interesting facts in my reading, but I'm most excited about the story/world details that suggested themselves to me as I was reading than I am about any of the concrete information.