Mundane Monday: Power Tower

Over the long Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I went to find some geocaches on a path that runs along a railroad track. A string of power lines also runs along this path. It was hot and a faint buzzing noise could be heard.

Book Review: A Haunting, by L.E. Moebius

30 Days Stream of Consciousness: A Haunting by L.E. Moebius

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Fifteen years ago, I worked at a biotech company in an old warehouse in a low rent part of town. Around the corner from that warehouse was an old dilapidated house with an overgrown yard, hidden sheds, and a population of cats. Every day I walked or biked to work and passed that house and peeked over the waist-high fence. I sometimes wondered what was back there. L.E. Moebius has an idea.

Belated Mundane Monday: Bicycle

Things have been busy this week, especially with end of school year activities. But my husband and I are still plugging away at finding a geocache every day.

Music of the Night

Last Monday evening I was at the dress rehearsal for my recent orchestra concert. During rehearsal, the sun went down, the moon came out. It was just starting to grow, curve bulging toward the right, in the shape of a “D,” a waxing crescent. My phone camera freaked out, trying to capture this distant shape, the little center square moving in and out of focus.

Book Review: Listening Against the Stone by Brenda Miller

Listening Against the Stone: Meditations by Brenda Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In my writing life, I tend to chafe against expectations of starting in medias res. I like backstory, I like to be prepared for the action when it comes. I don’t mind a leisurely pace. I am easily hurt by the implication that readers will not be as interested in my protagonist’s innermost thoughts and reflections as I think they should be.

One of the gentle lessons of this collection of essays is why I need to get over that reluctance to “get the story started”.

Connections

Last Saturday, my 12-year-old cellist son and I played for a garden tour in Palo Alto. He’s going to be on tour with his school orchestra during his teacher’s regular recital in a couple of weeks, so this performance, also organized by his cello teacher, was like a mini-recital for him. He played 2 movements from the Vivaldi cello sonata in A minor that he’s been working on, and it went well.

Mundane Monday: Snail in the Rain

It rained last week. It doesn’t rain enough around here. We had 4 dry years. This winter has been better, but not enough to end the drought.

When it does rain, the landscape changes remarkably and these little snails come out all over the place. This one stuck his head out, but soon retracted it when I put the camera too close.

The shell is surprisingly detailed and beautiful, even if you find them under every tree. Perfect for the Mundane Monday Challenge #58.

 

Mundane Monday: Overpass

Geocaching and the Mundane Monday challenge are a good match. I was looking for a cache to keep my streak going (I’ve now gone 123 consecutive days with a find), and I found a great caching series based on the planets. The cache for the sun is located in downtown San Jose, Mercury is a mile away, and caches for the other planets up to Neptune are placed at proportional distances away from the sun. Each planet’s cache also has clues in its logbook, and when you find the cache, you write down its clues so that when you add the clues up, you will get the coordinates for a Halley’s Comet cache. I have to find that one!

Book Review: Six Sisters by P.J. Lazos

Six Sisters by P.J. Lazos

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Six Sisters is the sort of book that makes me glad I started blogging. I found out about it by reading the author’s blog, Green Life, Blue Water. This book does not fit neatly into a niche or a genre, but in my opinion that is a strength. It consists of three novellas, each about two sisters, put together into one book. The novellas are arranged in order of length, shortest to longest, and, I would argue, in order of success. Whether they were written in that order or not, I don’t know, but I felt like I was watching the author grow in authority and power as a writer as the stories progressed.