Books, Bags and Bling

You are not going to believe this but our bags came home last night. It was late, I was getting into bed when I got a call to say they had arrived at the airport and did I want them tonight. So I got up, paced for about an hour when I got another call from the driver who apparently was lost. I am a 10 minute drive from the airport, so that poor guy must have really gone out of his way. Everything seems to be there, except one of the bags had been left out in the rain so long that it was wet on the inside, mostly clothes but unfortunately my two journals as well. Now they have dried out they suffered the ripple effect. Ah well, just another souvenir of the trip.

I didn't have the energy to go through them then, or even now. But I did want to talk about the magazines I picked up. I bought my first copy of Cloth Paper Scissors which I first heard about from Brenda at the Crafty Chook. And recently I heard about Somerset Apprentice (got that too) and while I was flipping through that, Somerset Studio caught my eye (so I picked that up too) and I couldn't leave behind Artful Blogging. These don't seem to be available in my little corner of the world so it will be nice to really take my time and see if I would want to subscribe to any of them. This stack should keep me busy for quite a while.


While I was away I finished up Sue Miller's, "The Senator's Wife". At first I only took the book from the library because I was looking for some fluff for vacation. But it turned out to be better than fluff. The book has two main female characters, one older and one younger and I found myself much more capable of relating with the older one. But what surprised me was the incredible honesty the author has in talking about secrets. Big secrets, little secrets but I was struck by the portrayal of the kind of secret that one keeps only to oneself - the one or two (or maybe three) that you never, ever tell anyone. I know I can think of two of my own secrets that will die with me and maybe that was why I was so moved by the book. At the moment I am about half way through Jodi Picoult's, "Plain Truth".

The Bling part of this post is an upcoming give-away I will be doing. I just need to get tomorrow's work day under my belt before I can phrase it properly here, so check back often to see if you can win something. That's another secret, but one that will be broken shortly.

Thanks for all the expressed concern about my luggage. It was a humbling experience to realize how attached I am to my possessions, despite all my inner work to the contrary. It seems I still have a little ways to go on that.

And how about a picture of the beach, since I've gone on and on about that lately: