seaside, sunset, and do I bite the bullet?

Current work: outline
Listening to: Beethoven

Reading: Always the Best Man, Fiona Harper (loved it – as always, great characterisation and witty dialogue)

Sort of busy and sort of lazy weekend. Beautiful skies on Saturday.

Sunday, I had a yen for the sea. The tide was right in, so we didn’t actually get to walk on the beach itself, but the sea air and the sound of the waves was enough to clear my head.

And then we picked up a few bags of gravel on the way home – yay, my exhaust doesn’t scrape on the pavement any more :o) DH has been talking for a while now about getting some decent running shoes, so as the shoe shop is in the garden centre complex, we went in to have a look and I bought the shoes he liked as part of his Christmas present. (He always gets one big present early. Birthday or Christmas, he always decides about 6 weeks before and he does the Shrek eye thing. Same when he wanted an iPod, same with the satnav. Or maybe I’m just over-indulgent.)

As for biting the bullet, I’m about to cave on the e-reader front. My original argument for buying the iPad was that I could use it as an e-reader, but I just don’t – I end up checking email or working instead. And it’s too heavy really to be comfortable as a reader. The iPod is too small for my middle-aged eyes (!). And although I do prefer the feel of a paper book, I am getting a bit short of shelf space (partly my own fault for not sorting out my foreign editions and just stacking them up on the shelves regardless – this will be a project for the Christmas hols, I think). I know it’s going to make me stuck to one retailer (and it’s never good for the consumer when one retailer has such huge dominance – fine for now while they’re still building said dominance, but not once it’s achieved) but at the moment, it’s looking like the Kindle Paperwhite.

Plan for today was to work on the new book, but there was a burst pipe at school, so the kids are home. Cough, bad parent didn’t have her phone switched on – but having said that I was in the building next door, so all they had to do was walk into reception and wait for me, or alternatively ring the gym and ask to speak to me and I would’ve told them to walk next door and meet me. (Eyeroll.)

I did suggest taking them swimming. No. Am a bit tempted to skive off and go to the cinema... but it's misty and murky outside, so I think their plans might involve the X-box and hot chocolate.