A Book for A Rainy Day

Oh dear. What a weekend of ups and downs! Bad news first. Two pretty major unforseen technological problems: Thursday night my laptop crashed and died and then on Friday, when he was ready to leave the office, Mark's car wouldn't start. So in addition to quite a bit of inconvenience this week, we also now we have some pretty hefty repair bills to look forward to. Oh well. I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, if a problem can be easily fixed with money, then it's probably not such a serious problem after all. We're all healthy and happy, so we'll just be thankful for that. :)

Plus, there were some very good things about this weekend too. For one thing, Saturday heralded in the official arrival of spring, and what an absolutely gorgeous day! Bright sunshine, gentle breezes, dandelions and daffodils peeking up to say hello. Just perfect. And even though I didn't get to go to the Asheville Artisan Bread Festival, as originally planned, what with the car fiasco and all, I did get in some quality front porch time. We had our first "wing ding" of the year Saturday night. We invited my parents, grandmother, and sister and brother-in-law over for grilled chipotle glazed chicken wings and (this is the best part) the first batch of homemade ice cream of the year! The ice cream machine hasn't been out of the shed since the maple ice cream extravaganza of October, so it was pretty exciting. We made strawberry, with some of the last frozen strawberries from last year, and each bite tasted like spring!

The weather turned on Sunday, gray and gloomy again, and there are rumors floating around again about snow in the higher elevations, but I'm choosing to ignore them. It's overcast and chilly today too, and what with Mark having to take my car to work, we're sort of stuck at home. But fortunately, I'm completely engrossed in the book I'm reading right now: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. At first I was intimidated by the size of this book. There was a time when big, hefty books were the norm in my world, but ever since Kate was born, my novel reading has taken a back seat. But this book is simply fantastic! If Tolkien and Jane Austen had teamed up to write a book, the result might have been something like this: full of magic and fantasy, but also charged with wry humor and social comedy. I stayed up way past my bedtime last night, reading "just one more chapter" until I could barely keep my eyes open, and reluctantly went to bed.