So much for the rain today. It turned out to be warm and sunny. Do you know what that means? Laziness! Instead of attempting to gather my thoughts on Transit by Anna Seghers, an excellent book by the way, I just feel like being chatty. Do you mind? If so, click elsewhere, it’s ok.

Bookman got to have the day off today which is nice because the summer heat makes his MS fatigue bloom as abundantly as the garden. Too bad I couldn’t be home with him. We do have Monday through Wednesday off together next week though to celebrate his birthday. I’ll be baking a cake. And Bookman mixed up some ice cream, mint chocolate chip, that is getting frosty in the freezer. That will taste good with the chocolate cake he says he wants me to make him.

Bookman did venture out to pick up a book I had on hold at the library. He’s nice like that. The book is Edible Forest Gardens volume two. It’s by the same guys who wrote that book I read earlier in the year, Paradise Lot. Except this one is not a chatty garden “memoir.” It’s a huge book that focuses on permaculture garden design. I suppose I should have gotten volume one first that talks about the ecological principles of permaculture. Now that I have put the cart before the horse though there is no going back. But I think I will be fine.

Earlier in the week I began another book I borrowed from the library, The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. This is the guy I read about in a National Geographic article a few weeks ago. I haven’t gotten far in the book but so far it is pretty good. Like last night I learned about Mycobacterium vaccae, a soil bacteria that is commonly ingested or inhaled when people spend time in nature (read in a park or garden or hiking in the woods). Research suggests this bacterium might play a role in helping mammals learn (people are mammals too remember). In tests, rats that were exposed to the bacterium were able to navigate a maze twice as fast as rats that were not exposed. The effects wear off in a few days. How cool is that? And if it really does boost learning and wears off in a few days, it makes regularly spending time in nature even more important.

While I am hovering on the fringe of the library, I have to remark on something that never ceases to amuse me. See, I don’t have much of a memory for numbers. I sometimes can’t even remember my own phone number and I still don’t remember the number of my desk phone at work and I have been there for four and half years. But you know what number I always remember? My library barcode number. I need it to request books online and my fingers fly across the number keys without me really even thinking about it. And this is a 14-digit number we are talking about. The other number I have no trouble remembering is my food co-op membership number (it’s a paltry 6-digits). That those are the two numbers I never forget probably says something about where my life priorities are.

I am a little over halfway through Tristram Shandy. What a hoot this book is! I am in the middle of the chapter on whiskers, for those of you who have read the book. This is a book written almost entirely in digressions. How Sterne does it and keeps me continually interested, I really can’t say. Only that he does. And he makes me laugh. A lot. This is my commute book and I think this morning while reading it on the train I might have snorted out loud in amusement over a story about a hot chestnut going down someone’s pants. If anybody noticed me snorting I don’t know because I was too busy enjoying my book to look up.

I am so glad tomorrow is Friday. It feels like it has been a long week for some reason. But it won’t last for much longer before the weekend finally arrives. I’m hoping that events will conspire in my favor on Saturday to allow me several long hours of reading time. May events also conspire in your favor for lots of reading time too.