The Ides of March

I’m blogging on a Monday!  And it’s a “holiday”!  (From Wikipedia:  The Ides of March (Latin: Idus Martiae) is the name of March 15 in the Roman calendar. The term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months.^[1] The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was killed in 709 AUC or 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus and 60 other co-conspirators.)

No military parades or stabbings here, but a slow return to “life after vacation.”  Luckily it was a nice day, weather-wise, so there wasn’t too much of a shock to my system.  We arrived in Rochester at 2AM and I slept til 8, read til 9 and then worked half a day.  A good, gradual re-entry to the real world.  I’m afraid I’m still on vacation time, so I hope I get to sleep at a decent hour tonight or tomorrow morning will be rough!

I didn’t do as much reading as I had hoped on vacation, because sun-worshiping is so much easier with your eyes closed!  But I finished the “Friday Night Knitting Club” before I left, so I was one book lighter.  I can’t wait to discuss it, as I ended up not liking it as much as I did initially.  Wondering what everyone else thinks about it?

I did start and finish Ann Bancroft’s and Liv Arneson’s book, “No Horizon is So Far,” and I loved it more than I expected to!  As I said, memoir/nonfiction is not my typical choice, but the determination and passion that these women had from a young age was really remarkable.  I can’t wait to meet Ann on Wednesday and hear her story.  The book was about their 2001 trek across Antarctica and since that time she and Liv have been to the north pole.  Again, more interesting than I thought!

I also picked up the book “Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  I bought it at the Shell Museum on Sanibel Island.  Anne wrote the book in 1955 while staying on Captiva Island, just north of Sanibel.  It is a jewel of a book and will probably be a gift to many of my women friends!

And on the plane ride home, I started “Peony In Love” by Lisa See.  I don’t know what it is about Asian historical fiction that I love, but I do love it.  I’m just breezing right through it.  It was a book I received free from Random House as a book club promotion.  Lisa has a few other books out that I’d like to read eventually. I hope that it puts me to sleep tonight, though.

Off to read!