Yesterday I said to Gertrude not to worry, because it won’t be long before the days start getting longer again. What do you know, today is the Solstice. I seem to never know anything about anything anymore. We will now begin marching towards spring, as I read somewhere. I like that. I think January and February are the real winter months here, so still hoping for some snow.

This was in a newsletter I get.

rant: I think I’ve mentioned this before. Reading, if you are not learning something new, is for fun and relaxation. It has been turned into a contest, a competition with self, a burden, a chore. I’ve seen articles about how your reading compares to other people’s reading. Keeping track of it all with lists and notebooks and what not. Making it a ‘something I have to do’ rather than something I do because I love doing it. I don’t understand this trend at all. At. All. I don’t care how many or what books any one else on the planet reads. I don’t need Oprah or Reese or whoever else it is to tell me what books I should be reading. I don’t need to blog about it, or review, although I have done that on Goodreads before for a really excellent book I read, or post my count or any of that. I just want to read. What looks interesting. What’s next in a series I’m reading. What I want to know more about. The book whose cover caught my eye. Or whose synopsis made me want to see more. Whatever. It is not a contest, a competition, with anyone out there or with myself. You know how people find something they love doing and then turn it into a business and then suddenly realize that all the love they had has gone? This is like that. /rant.