Writing about T. S. Eliot’s attraction to the Bloomsbury group in England, Peter Ackroyd says that “It was their nonconformity within a culture to which  they nevertheless firmly belonged which attracted…” him. When I read this sentence this morning, I thought this neatly described my own attitude and position in the US society. It is a place I will never be able to fit in (conform) to which nevertheless I feel that I “firmly” belong.

Eileen and I have now watched all but the last show of the HBO series adaption of George R. R. Martin’s first two volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire.  I am finishing up reading the second volume, Clash of Kings. In the first season, the HBO show seemed to generally follow the first book (which I watched after I read it). But in the second season they mess around a bit with the story in the second. Since I haven’t quite finished reading it (I’m on page 900 out of 969), I’m not completely in a position to understand their adaptation, but at this point it looks like they have conflated some parts of the plot line and truncated and shortened other parts.

 

I won’t bore you with the details, but I am interested to finish both reading the second volume and then viewing the last episode of the second season to understand just why they chose to change what they did.

I own a copy of the third volume, A Storm of Swords, and at this point, unlike the young bookseller who “took a breather” after the first two I am planning on reading it and the rest of the five volumes of the series.

I am not planning to buy any more hard copies in this series.  I think it would be more convenient to have the rest as ebooks. Yesterday I read my paperback while treadmilling. I find this pretty difficult in my present set-up. Much easier if I had an ebook of it and could read it with my Kindle Cloud reader (which I have been using more now that I have an honest to god Kindle).

I find it slightly surprising that the Kindle reader is so convenient for me. Tucking it in my pocket serves my need to always have something on hand to read when I am off to do grocery shopping or other errands that might find me standing in another damn line.

I do think it is helping me read a bit more which is a happy occurrence in my life.

I am experience some slight success at losing a bit of weight.

I am doing this by watching my diet more carefully, stopping having a glass of wine (which is usually the first of many) after treadmilling and not eating (or drinking) in the evenings.

This morning I had my lowest BP reading in weeks. It is not accurate to draw a straight causative line from a few days of changing behavior to one BP reading, but I am allowing myself to be slightly encouraged at these results.

Besides attempting to lower my BP this way, I am also thinking of the increased energies I will need to execute the my Winter schedule.  I am hoping some change in behavior will give me more energy and help me rest better.  So far so good, but as I say it’s too early to draw too many conclusions.

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California Balances Its Budget – NYTimes.com

Good old hippy dippy Jerry Brown seems to be having some limited success with the problems of our time in the US. Cool.

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Beware Stubby Glasses – NYTimes.com

Now that the election is over, David Brooks is making more sense to me. Here he points out how “crude folk psychology” is shaping public policy.

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Coins Against Crazies – NYTimes.com

I heard about the idea of issuing coins to address the deficit on the radio. Krugman offers some more explanation.

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Don’t Close Guantánamo – NYTimes.com

An advocate changes her mind and tells the reasoning.

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