This week, I learned again that sometimes things don’t go as planned.
While I did read and finish Dark Water, the sixth in the Makanna Investigation series, by Parker Bilal, the pseudonym of Jamal Mahjoub, a British-Sudanese author, other plans fell through:
- A trip to Corning on Aug. 18 with family, which has been delayed yet again, but this time because of a series of circumstances too complicated to explain here.
- My dad, who lives about an hour and half away, was coming over this Friday to help me cut down some bamboo-like weed in our yard that keeps sprouting every few years and has to be cut back. But then it rained.
- Instead, I started to read a book on Friday, but then after getting about halfway through, I decided to abandon it because I realized it just wasn’t that good.
The first two things will be rescheduled for a later date, but I don’t plan on returning to that book or any books, specifically mysteries, by authors new to me. While on the phone last night with a friend with whom I talk every month or so, usually about our reading too, I decided I need to return to reading Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series. I need narrative that doesn’t bounce around from first person subjective to third person omniscient and back again, like some of the mysteries I’ve been trying to read. I need the straight story and nothing but the straight story, although I don’t mind twists and turns, as long as it’s not in who’s telling that story.
I guess what I am saying is that I like structure. It might be why I prefer the liturgical churches to the shall we say less liturgical churches, the more “charismatic” churches. Or why I have a daily routine of playing Solitaire and listening to music before I go to work and before I go to bed.
That is not to say plans don’t go awry, as has happened these past few weeks, or even this past week. However, I continue to aim for a more structured life even still. That is always my target.
Addendum: My wife, who was in the hospital a couple of days last week, for atrial fibrillation is doing better. She is adjusting to her medications and has an appointment with a cardiologist next week. She is on vacation this week, as her mother is visiting us.
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