Lagging behind

I’ve been fairly busy lately: walking a lot, strength training in the gym, yoga workouts, drawing, painting, and reading. Lots of reading.

I just finished Cancer Ward, a book that surprised me.  I once read a review of the book which recommended reading it in the depths of winter, the implication being this is not a beach book.  That’s true.  It’s not a beach book.  Solzhenitsyn uses a cancer ward in a Soviet hospital in the 1950’s as a microcosm of the Soviet system in general.

What surprised me about the book was, well, I wasn’t entirely sure it was a book I’d be able to finish.  Worse yet, I thought that before I started reading it.  I haven’t been much in the mood for serious reading.  However, I found myself turning page after page, very much engaged in the story as told through the various characters in the book.  I had a little trouble with the Russian names at first.  Not the pronunciation or the length.  I’m a big fan of sci-fi and I can get past stuff like that.  What I found troublesome were the nicknames and patronymics, as the author moves between the nicknames, patronymics, and surnames more easily than I was able to keep up with at times.  Eventually I figured it all out and the reading was good.

Due to the reading, exercising, and all that, I’m lagging behind in my blog entries.  I have a few more photos from our Great Falls walk that I’d like to post.  And then there are the photos from the hike M and I took on Sunday which I someday hope to write about.

The solution, of course, is to waste time posting something else.  So, without further ado, I leave you with a colorful photo I found today while working on the massive project of organizing my photos.

(Butterfly in the wildflower meadow.  Photo by Robin.  2006)

I’ll try to get caught up tomorrow.  Really.  I will.