Sunday Salon ~ life goes on

BOOKS
Tomorrow, my face to face group will meet to start our discussion of Karen Armstrong's Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010).

I had hoped to have finished reading The Case for God (2009) as part of my background reading, but I haven't even cracked it open yet.  I know why I haven't been reading much and only got three posts written for the entire first half of this month — one of my best friends died December 29th.  Jane had asked me to do her funeral, which was actually a memorial service on Saturday, January 4th, followed by her burial at National Cemetery on Monday the 6th.  Then I could turn off my "official role" and grieve.  Nothing seems quite right anymore, though I have been going through the motions.  Something makes me smile, and I want to tell Jane about it — or I'm out running errands and want to call Jane to meet me for lunch.  I miss her — a lot — but life must go on.

LIFE GOES ON
My grandson Jamey turned 21 last week.  Here he is at his birthday dinner, sitting beside 4-year-old Raegan, who loves her Uncle Jamey.

I bought a new dryer, after the old one went "snap-clunk" in the middle of drying a load of clothes.  The new one arrived the same day the apartment complex decided to reinforce the balconies above my patio, starting early in the morning.  That involved setting up scaffolding which completely blocked my patio and the door that was the most direct way to bring the new dryer from the delivery truck in the parking lot.  (And remove the even heavier OLD dryer.)  The result was that we had to move furniture and boxes of books to allow entrance from our other door — NOT the way we had intended to spend our day.  But it's nice to have a dryer again.

Click to enlarge the pictures

Rory, a story teller from Ireland, invented Story Cubes.  I'm fascinated by these, and there's even a blog about Rory's adventures in taking his cubes to different places all over the world.  The cubes can be used as ice breakers at meetings or to get children to open up and tell stories.  Though there are several sets available, I chose to show you this one because I especially like the cube at bottom center that shows a person reading.  (Of course!  After all, this is a book blog.)  Pick a couple of the pictures on these cubes and tell me a story in the comments.

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