Hooray for the Internet

I started reading the new book last night for our next book club. It's called Water for Elephants, and I think I'm going to enjoy it. I've heard good reviews about this book, and I'm ready for a good story. My turn will be next to hostess The Bookies on April 21st, and I've been trying to come up with a good read for everyone. It's the hostess's decision to choose the book for the following month. I listened to an excellent book on CD's some months back, and I think that will be the one I choose. I particularly enjoyed listening to the reader, who was an English gentleman with a "Rumpole of the Bailey"-sounding voice. I was racking my brain trying to remember the title of it yesterday, and sitting here just now, part of it came to me. I poked the one word I thought I remembered on Amazon.com and found it in about 5 seconds. Hooray! I won't say what the name is, because some of the Bookies read this blog, and we're not supposed to let the cat out of the bag as to the next book before the meeting. Anyway, before I thought to go to Amazon.com, I was thinking I might have to go to the library and see if they could look back through my library card to see what I had checked out, and possibly come up with the title that way. I have no idea if that is even possible, but it probably is. After all, if the FBI can look at our library usage under the Patriot Act, shouldn't we be able to look at what we ourselves checked out? But I digress ...

I'm continually amazed at what you can find on the web. There's not a word or a topic or a place that you can't find instantly through Google or Wikipedia or Mapquest. It's like an online education available to anyone with a computer. Remarkable, and a really good thing. I'm on my computer every day, and I would be lost without it. I hardly watch TV any more, except for the news and 2 political shows, and my laptop is my entertainment.

David and his brother-in-law, Brian, came over today to check out Jim's new lathe and the red oak tree we had taken down this week. They were amazed at the size of the oak. Jim says it was over 100 feet tall and 2 feet in diameter. David counted the rings and said it was about 85 years old. They did some calculations and decided the weight was a ton for every 10 linear feet. Now that's some serious wood! If it had fallen in a storm and hit our house, that would have been a catastrophe. Now the issue is how to get that wood out of there without hiring a crane. And what to do with it!

PHOTO: An unusual November sky over our back yard just before sunset.