One of the things I have gained this past year (and even moreso in this past week) is an appreciation/taste for literature. You see, I have to confess that I've always tended to be a junk reader. I read things that I liked reading and I didn't care to stretch my horizons too much, for after all who wants to have to think too hard and work at understanding what you're reading? I dutifully read the assigned literature in school, though there were some books that I managed to avoid actually reading. I mean, my god, who wants to read Doestoyevsky in high school? And my mother did her very best to get me to read something beyond brain candy. I remember way back in junior high when we had those silly MS read-a-thons, and my classmates would read a Hardy Boys book or something only slightly above comic book. I would bring the form home to my mother and she would put these very detailed pay schedules on it--certain amounts of money (generally much more money than my classmates were able to get pledged) for certain books. And when I would take the form around to my neighbors they would see my mother's intricate pay structure and would think that that was how it was supposed to be, so they would match it. I read Leon Uris's Exodus in sixth grade that way, as well as Les Miserables, and Silas Marner.But then after I went off to college I reveled in the freedom of personal choice. I viewed such reading as being akin to eating slightly unpleasant foods. I was a grownup then, and could choose on my own what I wanted to do and wear and eat and read, and if I did not want to eat scrambled eggs I did not have to eat scrambled eggs and if I did not want to read Kafka I did not have to read Kafka.

Yet now I find I go back to those books, that literature that I had not the capacity to appreciate. And I am thankful that I was at least introduced to it, and even thankful that a certain amount was forced down my throat. I can appreciate it now, and have found that many of my peers, especially in the writing community, are far more widely read than I. And, feeling as if I am rather lacking in education or background is a somewhat new experience for me.

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The mountain was out yesterday.

That statement makes little sense to anyone who has not been to this area, I know. Mount Ranier is to the south-ish of here, some distance away, but it is a fairly large mountain. It is often cloudy and grey here though, with limited visibility, so one can look out the window and see the shadows of the Cascades, and only grey horizon to the south. But every now and then the sky clears, the haze dissipates, and suddenly there's this enormous, white-clad mountain there.

And it takes your breath away.

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There was a great view of the city last night. My window faces the city and Puget Sound, and last night the moon was just a sliver of newness, poised over the buildings. I pressed my camera to the window and took a couple of pictures, though I don't have high hopes of them coming out.

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Yesterday was also laundry day. Tamela, Chiara, Michael and I trekked down to the basement. I brought along my beach towel that has a craps layout on it, and while we waited for our laundry to finish I taught the others how to play craps. This may be a weekly event now, especially since several of the others were a bit put out that they had missed it.

And yes, tipping was most assuredly part of the lesson.

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I know... you're all sick of me saying names when you have no earthly clue who these people are. Sometime this week I promise I will make some sort of explanation/description page.