Riffday: it was ninety-nine cents!

1. We hiked 10 miles with 4300+ feet of elevation gain (and loss, which is almost worse) yesterday.  Not kidding.  Would I kid about something like that?  I can walk today, but barely.  Once my knees (and hips and quads and feet and etc) quit aching, I'm sure I will appreciate that I got to see such incredible views (and they were incredible), but at the moment, I sort of just wish I wasn't sore.

2.  But I can't post pictures tonight because I'm on the road again and the camera is at home.  I'm on my way to meet up with Julie (hey!! twice in one month!) and Karen (whom I feel like I've known forever but have never actually met).  Will report back, and maybe even post a picture or two.

3.  Dean and I played in church this morning--the offertory and the "special music."  He plays guitar, I play flute.  We look very sweet and couple-y up there, and no one ever knows that we might have nearly killed each other over deciding what to play and how to play it.  We did a couple of John Michael Talbot songs this time and they have been running around in my head ever since, even in the face of a concerted effort to dislodge them by listening to P!nk and Len and Imagine Dragons while I was driving along in the car.

4.  Another thing I listened to was the audio version of "Beethoven's Shadow" by Jonathan Biss.  Biss is a concert pianist, and if you're at all interested in piano or Beethoven or classical music in general, it's a must-read (or must-listen, as the case may be).  It's also really interesting if you enjoy an intelligent discussion about art, or the development of an artist, or listening to an artist talk about his work.  And it even scored points for getting me to think about writing, in a cross-pollination sort of way.  There are similarities (and vast differences) between what he does when he sits down at a piano to interpret a great piece of music and what a writer does when she sits down in front of a blank page, and making the mental comparison (even though he never mentions it) was fascinating to me.  Highly recommended, although he sort of lost me toward the end. (and if you're an Audible member, it's free through the end of the month in their "Happy Christmas in July" promotion.)

5.  I took down the poll as soon as we got home from vacation (eyesore!) but I forgot to say how it turned out.  Y'all are remarkably reluctant to respond, I must say.  That post had 38 counted pageviews (which means there were probably 25% or so more than that), and only 7 of you responded. *shakes head*  As will surprise no one who has been around me for the past couple of years, I can't remember what the results were.  I know, I know, there were only SEVEN votes. Four, one, and two, but I can't remember which response was which.  So, my first poll was what they call an epic fail.  Except I did learn that you, my dear readers, don't like to participate in polls.   At least, not here.

6.  Several times now I've wanted to discuss vigilante-ism in popular novels because it's starting to bug me.  Seems like practically every novel I've read this summer (and several more over the past couple of years) has someone taking the law into their own hands and blowing away the bad guy, accompanied by a very high-minded, elevated moral tone about how it's the right thing to do.  I so thoroughly disagree with this that I'm having a hard time getting through the novel I'm reading right now (The Hum and The Shiver by Alex Bledsoe) even though it's otherwise really, really good.  You know me well enough by now to know that the last thing I want is to start a political discussion here, but *cough* George Zimmerman *cough.*  The reason I'm sticking this in a single paragraph near the end of a boring post is because I don't really feel competent to write an entire serious post on the subject. But I feel pretty strongly about it.  In books, it's always someone who is really wise and experienced so that somehow they know who the people are who deserve to die, but in real life, it's rarely all that clear, and it just ends up with neighbors suspiciously eyeing neighbors as they stockpile AK-47s in the rec room and take pot shots out the back window.  Stop it already.

7.  PellMel has been hitting the thrift shops to outfit her new apartment.  She shared apartments with other girls in undergrad, but this is her first time having to put it all together herself.  She's found some great deals.  I've been with her a few times, but I discovered that they often have large used book sections and we all know the last thing I need is more books.  Put the book down and back away from the book section.  Danger lurks everywhere.