One Summer by David Baldacci.......

Baldacci's books are usually thrillers with plots usually related to politics. He's not one of those authors whose latest books I must, must, must read, but often I read one after Hubby has finished it.

This book was very different from Baldacci's usual style.

Jack Armstrong, a war veteran, is terminally ill with something that is never defined or explained in the book and is only referenced as something that Jack cannot spell or pronounce. (Read: The author made it up.) He is prepared to die but determined to last as long as Christmas. He writes one letter every day for what he assumes will be the last week of his life. On Christmas Eve his wife, who has forgotten to pick up some of Jack's medications from the pharmacy, dashes out into an ice storm and dies tragically in a car accident.

Jack's in-laws begin to make decisions as to what should be done with the three children, who are two, twelve, and almost sixteen. They determine that the only workable solution is to split the children up, sending them to live with various relatives, and put Jack in hospice.

Only Jack doesn't die. He suddenly begins to get better, breathing on his own and regaining his strength. He makes the backward trek from hospice to a sort of halfway house for the terminally ill, then sets about the task of recovering his family.

Jack's wife had a special place called "The Palace" on the coast of South Carolina as a child, and she has told Jack that she intends to take the children there the summer after Jack dies. Therefore Jack feels compelled to make the trip himself, especially after his wife's grandmother conveniently dies and leaves The Palace to Jack. He takes his children to South Carolina, and his best friend tags along.

The book had a very sweet story line and a pleasant ending, but it wasn't a satisfying read. I'm not one to predict a book's endings, and I can NEVER figure out whodunit, but I saw this one coming from the very beginning. I didn't think the characters were fully developed, particularly the teenaged daughter. She exhibited the extremes of teenage girl moodiness, but there was no middle ground. The two-year-old spoke baby talk, and the twelve-year-old forgot to talk at all.

It wasn't bad enough that I put it down in the middle, and I can honestly say it brought me to tears in a couple of places. I'm not a big fan of thrillers, but I'd rather read that genre by Baldacci than another one like this.

Some Things are Hard to Understand.....

Before today, the last time I rode my bicycle was last Wednesday. I wasn't feeling great on Monday OR Wednesday, but I figured I could be miserable ON my bike or miserable OFF it. (There was a time I would have looked for any excuse NOT to ride my bike. Maybe I really AM a cyclist.)

Anyway, on to where I was really going with this post...

I rode the same exact route today that I rode last Wednesday. It's what I've started calling my "medium" route, about 15 miles long. The "long" route is 18 miles, and the "short" one is 12 miles. I've been riding the "medium" one without the extra little three-mile loop because the sun sets so much earlier now, and the shadows start creeping in before I can get home.

Last Wednesday I averaged 14.0 mph, which is my new standard. I try not to obsess about my average, but I have to admit I'm a little disappointed if it dips below 14.

Today when I left school, it felt like I was pedaling through mud. Or wet cement. I even looked down at my tires to see if they were so low on air that it was making it more difficult to pedal. It was uncharacteristically warm this afternoon, and I felt better than I have in days.

And I averaged 14.5 mph.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

Not How a Cold is Supposed to Act......

This has been the strangest cold I've had in recent memory.

Wait... It's been the ONLY cold I've had in recent memory. So I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

Typically when I get a cold, it starts in my sinuses then settles in my chest. Sometimes (but thankfully rarely) it becomes bronchitis.

This time the tightness started in my chest, THEN progressed to coughing, THEN the sniffles and sneezing started yesterday. I felt the worst yesterday morning, and if it had been a school day, I probably wouldn't have gone. It was a FOOTBALL SATURDAY, though, so of course I went to the game.

We had already made plans to spend the night, since the game was over after dark, and some of those RV tailgaters just set their chairs and stuff up right in the middle of the driving lanes, oblivious of the fact that SOME PEOPLE might not want to make an ENTIRE WEEKEND of the event.

It was a miserable night, though. The noise of the generator, which usually doesn't bother me, almost drove me insane. I couldn't breathe because of my cold, and I almost woke Hubby up to tell him let's just go home. It must have been around 11:00. When I woke up again I was convinced it MUST be time to get up, and I stumbled to the living room part of the RV to look at my cell phone. It was 2:17.

Good. Lord.

We did manage to doze back off, thankfully, and it was just breaking daylight when we woke up the next time. I was never so glad in my life to come home. I love the RV and usually I'm just as happy sleeping in it as I am my own bed at home, but I guess because I felt rotten anyway, I wanted to be in my real bedroom.

I was unable to blog last night due to crappy internet service. I didn't even bother taking the laptop, since it hasn't worked where we tailgate, and while I could get TO my blog on my iPhone, I couldn't get to the part where it said "New Post."

I apologize that I made you wait a whole day for me to regale you with tales of mucus, sniffling, sneezing, wheezing, and whining.

You're welcome.

On a happy note, the ballgame was a thriller. Not a thriller in that it was competitive, but it was a huge win, and I'll take a lopsided victory over a heart-stopping one almost any day. The win means that if we can manage a win next week over lowly not very competitive SEC opponent Kentucky, we will go back to Atlanta for the SEC Championship game on December 3rd.

I can just hear you now. "Oh yay. More football talk. Goody."

But cheer up. It's only 47 more days until I start babbling incoherently about college gymnastics.

Favorite Things Friday - UGA Sweater.....

Welcome to the first installment of Favorite Things Friday. It may be the only installment because -- who knows? -- by next Friday I may have forgotten completely that I wanted to start a new tradition.

Today's Favorite Thing is my UGA sweater.

This sweater is one of my favorite articles of clothing in the whole world. Now before you go saying, "Well of COURSE it is, it has UGA all over it...." that's not the reason it's one of my favorites. I have approximately a million different articles of clothing proclaiming my love for my alma mater, but this is one is my favorite for a number of reasons.

I've had this sweater since 2002, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. That was the first year UGA had any prayer of going to the SEC Championship game in Atlanta, and early in the season I told Hubby that if UGA made it, that was ALL I wanted for Christmas, was to go to that game.

As it turned out, Hubby WON tickets to the game through work, and I guess he felt guilty that the ONLY thing I wanted for Christmas was something he didn't even have to pay for. He may have also felt a little bit sorry for me because on the Saturday morning of the game, I had to go to school. And work. On the yearbook. On a freakin' Saturday.

Hubby decided while I was working he would run to Athens and buy me the sweater I had mentioned seeing at the UGA bookstore. That was his first mistake. He took Sweet Girl with him so he could make sure of the sizing. That was his second mistake. (Because it cost him a sweatshirt for her too.)

He surprised me with the sweater when I got home from school, and I was thrilled to be able to wear it to the championship game. He still looked a little shell-shocked from the price tag, but when we won the game, he considered it worth the sacrifice to do his part.

You can see it's a little rough around the edges, but for me that's part of the charm. I don't wear it to school as a rule; only big football games. I did, however, wear it today, and I plan to wear it to tomorrow's HUGE game. (Tomorrow could determine whether or not we return to the SEC Championship game.) In the picture above, you can barely see at the bottom of the sleeve where the stitching has come apart a little bit.

In this picture, the felt of the megaphone has attracted some fuzz from other parts of the sweater.

Mom had to help me replace one of the buttons once, and you can see the thread above where this one wants to come off too. Or again. Oh who am I kidding, Mom did it all by herself while I watched a different ballgame on television.

Sure, it's a little ostentatious.

Make that a LOT ostentatious.

The "G" in the picture above is on the BACK of the sweater. I guess they ran out of room after they put all the crap on the front.

I've never seen another sweater like this one, so I try to take care of it. I only have it professionally dry cleaned, and I always wear something under it like a tank top or a turtleneck. I wore what I THOUGHT was a black turtleneck under it today, only to discover after I got to school that the turtleneck was actually navy blue. If we don't win tomorrow, it will be all my fault because I mixed navy in with the red and black. (No, I'm not superstitious. Or psycho. Or a freak.) The first thing I did upon arriving home this afternoon was to make sure I knew where my BLACK turtleneck was for tomorrow.

10 Things I'd Rather Do Tomorrow.....

Ten things I'd rather do tomorrow than go to school:

1. Finish the crochet project I'm working on so I can start another one.
2. Finish reading the book that's checked out in Hubby's name and is due tomorrow.
3. Find a way to tell Hubby the book he swore I would "really like" has yet to impress me.
4. Figure out all the gazillion places my credit card number is stored with various online stores since my credit card company tactfully told me my information had been accessed illegally and by the way here's you a new card, have fun trying to figure out all the places you need to change the number.
5. Take pictures of some things that will I plan to show on a new regular feature on my blog, "Favorite Things Friday." I unabashedly stole the name from someone whose blog has a jillion followers (and is NOT named Pioneer Woman), but he usually posts videos on his, so I'm not apologizing for stealing the title.
6. Sleep.
7. Sleep.
8. Sleep.
9. Watch the entire replay of the Georgia-Auburn game from 2007, the famous (infamous?) "Blackout Game," all of which Katydid and I missed because we were riding the tandem 75 miles that day.
10. Did I mention sleep?

"Between the Hedges" Takes on a Whole New Meaning.......

If you're not familiar with Georgia football, the expression "between the hedges" might mean nothing to you. The football field at UGA has meticulously trimmed hedges on either side, so the phrase has taken on a life of its own over the years. The hedges are so sacred that when they had to be removed in preparation for soccer to be played there as part of the 1996 Olympic Games, there was an entirely new protocol written. Sprigs of the treasured hedges were sent to about four different TOP SECRET locations so that when they were replaced, they would be part of the original hedges.

See, it isn't just me. The whole Bulldog Nation is full of freaks.

One of UGA's battle cries has become, "It's time to tee it up between the hedges!"

During last Saturday's rout of the New Mexico State Aggies (give us a break, you're SUPPOSED to win 63-16 on Homecoming), the phrase took on a whole new meaning, at least for one Georgia player.
Something bothered me (you knew it would) about this announcer AND the female one on ESPN I heard give a description of the same incident. They both called them "bushes." Everyone in college football knows they're "hedges." If you are A) an announcer calling a football game IN THAT STADIUM; or B) a reporter who covers college football AS YOUR PROFESSION, you should know that, at least in Georgia, those English privets are called "hedges," not "bushes."

Besides, if we followed their examples, the rallying cry would be: "It's time to tee it up between the bushes."

And that, my friends, would take on a whole new meaning.

Food as Fuel - Part 1.......

I've been thinking about food and eating a lot lately.

Oh, I guess for the last .... 50 years or so. I was probably thinking about food and eating while I was still in utero.

I've come up with some ideas about food that if I could only put into practice myself, I would look like that princess chick who just married that prince dude. But at least I'm thinking about them, which is one teensy step better than only thinking about my next meal. Or candy bar. Or snack.

Disclaimer: These thoughts may sound like I have the whole eating situation completely figured out and I will never have a weight problem again. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Correction: I DO have it all figured out, I just can't figure out how to put it into practice. 

I read something a while back, and in fact I think I remember making one of my usual snide remarks about it on this very blog. The concept is that we shouldn't eat until we are full; we should eat until we aren't hungry anymore.

When I read that (and commented on it), I remember posting something sarcastic like if I could do that, we wouldn't be HAVING this little talk.

But the truth is, that one little mantra actually works.

IF I can remember to think it sometime before the next-to-last bite on my plate.

IF I can make myself stop eating even knowing that I'm not hungry anymore.

I marveled once at my principal during lunch because she was having "leftovers" that wouldn't have filled up a tablespoon. At least that's how it appeared to me. Seriously, the amount of food she had saved from the night before to have for lunch at school the next day was such a small one that I wouldn't have bothered. I would have ... eaten it, even if I were already full.

Therein lies the part of the problem.

I've always been bad (?) to eat EVERYTHING THAT WAS THERE. No matter the quantity. If the portions were small and the food disappeared, I was satisfied. If the portions were huge and there happened to be some food left, I ate MORE OF IT.

I came up with the bright idea once that it must be my mother's fault, so I asked her if she had ever made us stay at the table until our plates were clean. I'd heard that tidbit before, so I was ready to blame her for making me eat more than I needed.

Her response? "I had to push you away from the table from the time you could sit up."

Ouch.

There were seven of us when I was very young, and I distinctly remember going around the table after a meal and eating whatever anyone else left. My eldest brother called me the "human garbage disposal." I didn't even know what a garbage disposal WAS, but I had a vague idea that it wasn't a good thing to be called.

Anyway, that's one thing I'm working on. It requires that I be MINDFUL of what I'm eating, how much I'm eating, and how I feel at any given moment during a meal. I'm not there yet. But I'm gaining on it.

Wait...what?

Did I really just say "GAINING on it"?