Mid-Winter Happenings

14 MuHarram - 1429 A.H.

We haven't been up to much lately, just the usual. Working, chillin' out--that sort of thing. The weather's been dull and rainy, but we managed a couple of short walks around the village.

We were asked to attend a Confirmation service a couple of nights ago--so we duly attended. I was mainly surprised when the church didn't collapse after I walked in. Having (mostly) forgotten about all of the pomp surrounding Confirmation services, I was also surprised at how long it all took. Apparently, it was even longer last year, as there were more Confirmandi. Ah well, we survived.

I've been spending a bit of time over at GoodReads the past few days (in fact, I've been spending virtually all of my on-line time there). I received an e-mail invite from Mark D., over at Cheek. The site seemed interesting to me, so I signed up. It's pretty much a place to list the books you've read (and are reading and want to read) and give and get recommendations from fellow bookworms. It's been an interesting exercise trying to remember exactly what I've read over the years, and when. I've been amazed that some of the titles I read over twenty years ago actually appear in the GoodReads database. I'm still adding titles to my bookshelf--I'm up to around 170 at the moment. When I've got as much as I can remember, I'll explore the other features of the site. Maybe I'll see you there.

The next couple of months looks good for tunes, with the newest Mars Volta album, The Bedlam In Goliath, out on Monday. More Latin-tinged prog-punk from the boys..and that's fine with me. I think I'll give their last one, Amputechture, another spin or two. Mike Oldfield's brand new one, Music Of The Spheres, is due out in March. He's collaborated with Karl Jenkins on the record. Jenkins is best known for his classical-lite Adeimus series--but once upon a time he was a second keyboardist in Soft Machine (alongside Mike Ratledge), with his apex being the remarkable Six album, released in 1973. From what I can gather, "Music Of The Spheres" seems something of a 'return to form'. I haven't been overly impressed with the last couple of Oldfield albums, so I'm hoping "Music..." does recover some of the magic. The new Elbow album is also slated to hit the racks in March. The boys are touring then as well and we may try to catch them at the Academy. It'll be tough for them to top Leaders Of The Free World, but I suspect they gave it really good effort. Time to warm up the disc player.