Responding to the requests of my dedicated readers (both of you), I am back in the blogging world. I spent the last week at North Pointe in Adirondack Mountains National Park, far removed from things like cable TV and cell phone service. It was quite beautiful and a great way to relax and recharge, but I am ready to be back in civilization.
According to my rather generous guests, one of the great things about the Adirondacks is that there is nothing poisonous there. No poison ivy, poisonous snakes, poisonous spiders... nothing. On the downside, there are bears and swarms of black flies which can apparently debone a cow in under minute. OK, maybe not, but they bite. And draw blood. And that's pretty damn irritating.
I spent the week learning to water ski without much success, hiking through the woods, and taking lots of boat rides. That, and sitting on the back porch and reading. I plowed through Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as my brain wanted something difficult after the steady summer reading diet of Harry Potter and college football preview magazines. I learned a lot from the Romans, mainly... do not mess with the Vandals.
7 comments:
May I just say, I am so proud of you for reading Gibbon. /beam
It was either that, the complete works of Louis L'Amour, or a stack of National Geographics from the 1960s. Gibbon it was. Quite an enjoyable read actually. Especially when he gets all snarky about the kings of his time period (late 1700s).
I can't believe your knees held up for you to even attempt water skiing. Let me guess....you're on crutches again?
I am not on crutches and my knees held up. My real problem is I just never figured out how to keep my weight back, which inevitably lead to a fairly horrific crash instead of me becoming upright. I learned a few things:
1) When water skis are ripped from your feet by the force of the water... duck. Because they hurt when travelling at a considerable velocity and collide with my head.
2) Mountain lakes have very cold water.
3) Any instruction which begins with "bend your knees" is probably doomed to failure with me.
I'm impressed you were able to read Gibbon in that short of a period. I bought that book a couple of summers ago, but I never had time to sit down to read the approximately 1500 pages. Don't tell me anything about it--I may read it sometime later.
haha.. the texas alumnus is illiterate.
I'd hate to give the ending away.
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