During the final months of my Junior year in High School I started to date a young woman.  Upon one of my first visits to her home her younger siblings introduced me to a set of books that I thought were pretty cool. They were pretty basic.  You had to simply follow he story and on these large pages find various things on the pages, but in the end you have to find the main character, Waldo.  As you progressed through the book it became more and more difficult to find him, but they were great fun. A day or two later, before school started she brought me a present.  Her mom had purchased an additional Waldo book (it just happened to have the last and most difficult in the series at the time) for me.  I was a bit surprised and wasn't sure if this was a gift or a bribe.  A gift because she liked me or a bribe to stay away from her daughter. I've still got the book and my own kids today, 19 years later.  It's a bit worse for wear and my own kids like to pull it out on occasion and try to find Waldo. But the students at Rutgers made it MUCH more simple for me to find Waldo today :D

Ok, so maybe my plan to read a book (yes a single book) has stalled and I'm not further along than I was at the beginning of the month. Maybe I'll try again in February.

I selected and began reading the book that I'd like to read for the remainder of my break. It's Soul of the Lion - A Biography of General Joshua L. Chamberlain.  I bought it while in Gettysburg this summer.  I've always been interested in Chamberlain's life and am excited to read it.  Now I just need to force myself to sit down and take a few moments to read.  So far I'm on page 18.  I've got a long way to go before next Monday.

Suddenly my Friday evening has opened up quite substantially. Or wait....never mind. This is me being a good husband (I really do love my wife) for her allowing me to go shooting (soon). I can't say much, I've not read the books so I have no idea what to expect.  Maybe I'll be a huge fan come Saturday morning and start reading the books, but somehow I doubt it.

He died yesterday.  I was introduced to his books as a teenager in my Senior English class. I read several of them and have often wanted to read more of them, but due to the lack of free time I haven't read many books lately.  In fact I've been working on one book for about 5 years now and I'm still not even halfway through it. Reading the articles about his life today makes me want to read more of his works.  Now if only I had the time.

I walked into the Wal-Mart as they were counting down, 5...4...3...2.5...2...Midnight. Twenty minutes later I walked out with some software (my real intent for going to the store), 2 boxes of Crunch-N-Munch (my latest "Snack" fad, more on those another time though) and a copy of Stephenie Meyer's latest drug book. I walked past the line to the electronics section and on my way back decided to see if I could get a copy of the book.  As I waited in the fast moving snake-like line, I saw some neighbors.  They were headed towards the stack of books, I was headed the other direction as the line wound around the Lawn and Garden section. A few minutes later, their daughter came up to me and let me know that they had a book for me at the front of the line.  They had apparently been able to grab one for everyone in their party, and didn't need that many, so they gave one to me and one to another neighbor in line just a few people ahead of me.  A huge thanks goes out to them. Disclaimer: I didn't get the book for me.  In fact, I haven't event read the other books in the series.  In fact, I haven't read the Harry Potter books, not the Work and the Glory series.  I bought this as a surprise for my hard working loving wife, who deserves the time to herself.  Where she can get away from the real world and escape into a good book for a while.