One Good Read Deserves Another

 

Merry Christmas if that is what you celebrate in these ecumenical times! -- Charlie having soundly conked out in the middle of the day after the 50-whatever miles from the weekend, three fight-or-flight runs on Sunday and four walks at a more normalized pace, one walk and a brisk winter's day ride Monday -- he is grinning over our all-time favorite reading of the Gingerbread Boy (via the Teletubbies) on his iPad and I'm reading quarters, eighths and paragraphs of reviews on the London Review of Books site as I don't have a subscription, all to get ready (without really trying to) to enter the different world of the Romans, Carthago, Pontus on the Euxine Sea, Alexandria, come spring semester 2013.

It snowed but not much and only stuck to the grass and sidewalk and not the street.

After the morning bike ride we purchased a fair amount of better-quality fast food including some pizza from the newest pizza place in our modest Jersey town. Jim dubbed it fair and his opinion shall stand as we are perhaps the rare American household in which pizza eaters are a minority. (In Charlie's case, another side effect of years eating gluten-free and casein-free; soy rice crust pizzas were presented and turned down by all.)

Charlie and Jim did a second bike ride in mid-afternoon and definitely needed their bike lights.

I arranged a pile of gifts on what used to be the TV stand, topping it off with the latest set of 'first readers' we have gotten for Charlie. I haven't yet felt it was the right, fleeting moment to read one to him! A goal during this week-plus of break, clearly.

There was a lot of lounging, sorely needed by Jim as he'd accompanied Charlie on every wheel turn and foot run of Sunday and by Charlie himself too though, due to that deep nap, he is wide awake at 2.15 am and, from the sounds of things, not unhappy.

Me (with a veritable pile of reading, actual paper kind) either.