It's Saturday morning and I'm waiting for some books to download so I have some new listening material so I thought I'd say Hi!

Last night the weather was pleasant for a change.  We went to the diner for dinner .  We usually go somewhere for dinner on Fridays and the diner is close and cheap and the food is good.  I wanted a burger and they make wonderful burgers.  They actually taste like meat and don't give me all kinds of intestinal distress like the burger places tend to. (I like McD's for breakfast but the burgers make me ill, literally, so I avoid them). 

I noticed that the humidity wasn't too bad and the temps were more moderate.  It was probably around 90 degrees but after hovering around and over 100 all week, 90 felt absolutley balmy!  Pk went off in search of more wood stash (he and Patrick loaded 300 pounds of wood into my long suffering car and brought it home) and I got a glass of iced tea and some mindless knitting and a great mystery story and sat out front with Hobbes.

He was so happy!  He likes to be outside but he wants company out there.  It's been too hot but last night was a lovely night.  I was afraid of skeeters but I remembered this thing we bought a few weeks ago.  I do not like to spray myself with insect repellant and don't like to spray the outdoors either.  It feels wrong to release great quantities of poison into the air.  We saw this little device at the grocery store and were intrigued.  Pk needs something for the small area of his workshop and this is a fan driven device that releases repellant slowly in  a small area.  I think it covers about 12 sq feet.  I clipped it to my chair and I didn't get one mosquito bite in 3 hours.  That's some kind of record around here where we joke that the mosquito is the state bird. 

So, I sat outside with Hobbes and we enjoyed the soft evening air.  I was listening to The Chopin Manuscript by Jeffrey Deaver.  And oh my, it was a good story.  It's one of those stories where 14 or so different mystery writers all write a different chapter.  Jeffrey Deaver started the story and then it made its way through all these disparate writers and ended back with Mr Deaver to tie up all the loose ends and make a sensible ending.  I love these kind of books.  I'm familiar with some of the authors and so I listened for their "voices" but these writers all blended seamlessly to tell a wonderful story of espionage and murder.  It's ready by Alfred Molina who does a great job with the accents and voices.  What a good read (listen).  I'm now going to try (for the third time) to listen to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (S. Larsen).  I say third time because I've tried twice and can't seem to get into it.  It's this wildly popular book (and soon to be movie) and I don't get it.  I also didn't like The DaVinci Code, so maybe it's just me.  Anyone read TGWTDT?  Did you like it?

This is a no obligations weekend.  I have laundry to do, which I will start soon and then if the humidity isn't too bad, I'd like to spin.  I can smell the rain so it must have started.  I love the smell of summer rain, especially wet asphalt.  It's so evocative.  We are supposed to get rain today and tomorrow.  We need it and it's something of a relief not to have the sun blazing overhead.  The clouds are more restful.

So, anybody doing anything interesting this weekend?  Pk and Kate and El will be watching Holland play Spain tomorrow.  Pk's hoping to catch the 3rd place game today so he's outside right now cutting the 300 pound log down into manageable chunks.  Ah, the sounds of chainsaws in the morning!

Have a good weekend!