Reading and Balance

Now that I've let loose of the need to spend hours each week either training or feeling guilty for not training I'm getting some balance back into my life. 

Week 1 post the UltraMidwest 24 Hour Race I attended to urgent (paperwork) matters associated with my work and our family finances.  Week 2 post UM24 I attended to important but not urgent similar matters.  Now that I'm into Week 3 post UM24 I've begun to read for pleasure. 

I'm rereading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for about the 4th time.  I seem to reread it every decade, uncovering meaning that I couldn't possibly have understood the previous decade.  Age and experience matters. 

I'm putting myself to sleep every night with 3 to 5 pages of John Grisham's The Brethren, a scattered and clumsy novel that bores me into a snooze. 

I spend most every morning sitting with my wife, Annie, reading the NYT and sipping coffee.  We catch up on what the other is thinking about, discuss plans, share ideas. 

Ah, yes, and for Mia and Mickie, the grandkids, 7 and 5.  We make up stories and tell eachother about the dreams we had last night.  And we play `cheese and baloney' when we don't have the patience for bedtime stories. 

And half a dozen books on geology, paleoecology of the Southwest, and various ant colonies.