The weather felt like April, rather than like January. I love these warm-weather-winter days. We cannot have them every day--that way lies drought, a bane in Texas. But I like them on intermittent days. Yesterday I saw butterflies on the wing.
I only got a brief lunchtime walk in at Travis Farm Park in Murphy. At work,calls kept me in until after dark, and I decided not to walk after the sun set. The moon and a planet are in a lovely formation in the evening sky these days.
My breakfast was a single packet of instant oatmeal. For lunch I had three soft chicken tacos. For dinner, I picked up some orange roughy, which my wife baked for us. We ate it with rotini and salad. I had hummus chips and a Skinny Cow ice cream confection for snacks.
I used to write a lot of book and music reviews on Amazon.com. Once upon a time, I was in the top 100 or so, and then for a much longer time I was in the top 500. Now my ranking is much lower. I do not review as much on Amazon anymore. But once in a great while someone will post a response to a review. The responses are few and far between, and often dissent. But they are like little telegrams from the ether. One warned readers that I must not be a bona fide reviewer, because I gave a good rating to something some other people did not like. Recently, one replied to my giving 3 stars to Emma Curtis Hopkins' 1924 New Thought book "High Mysticism". The response to the review expressed concern that I had awarded only three stars in light of the book not being for everybody, and ended the response with the term "facepalm". Nothing says it quite like facepalm. The response to the review made a pretty good, if facepalmish, point. I chose not to reply with how the book is three star for me anyway. But perhaps I am completely off base in so rating the book, like those Amazon readers who proclaim Moby Dick a fish tale.
I packed Tuesday evening for a trip. The event to which I travel is "business casual". I always find "business casual" to be a bit tricky, because often folks don't dress that way. If I wear my business casual attire--a sport coat, khakis, and a dress shirt, then folks will be apt to show up in suits. I've been wearing a suit to work this week for work reasons. I will probably wear one today. But we'll see the rest of the week if I am in a sport coat while the world is in pinstripes.
I have lots of hours of legal education for the upcoming California mandatory continuing legal education reporting deadline. But I need 1 hour of "competence" training,which is the current bar euphemism for a seminar on not taking drugs and on getting help when one is depressed. These are worthy topics, as lawyers who get disciplined by the bar often have substance abuse or stress/mental health factors at work as well as other errors. As one who has never abused any substances other than perhaps chocolate, bananas, sugar, and gingerbread, I sometimes have less than a compelling need for a lecture on avoiding wine I do not drink. I have had to deal with the scourge of depression, in one instance in the wake of a physical health issue. I was not up for drugs or depression. But I saw last evening that one seminar, in true California fashion, is called "Mindfulness". I will sign up for that and be here now.
I am still meandering through Roy Bayfield's non-fiction meditation on journeys called "Desire Paths". I breezed through the first 80 pages in a sitting. Then I got stuck on page 85 or so, nearly felled by a metaphor that lost me. But I soldiered through its vaguely funny point, and now am at page 115. I no longer breeze through books the way I once did. But I linger over magazines, and perhaps that is a consolation.