fajrdrako | A cool evening...

An interesting day, a satisfying day.

I got some things done that I was worried about - like, sending my re-edited Pirates of the Caribbean story off to Kathy Agel for her fanzine "Divers Doings". And buying a crockpot cookbook for my new slow cooker. Do any of you know any good recipe for those things? The best one so far is the one where you throw together a pot roast, a can of coke, and a bottle of ketchup and let it cook for ten hours. It isn't exactly on my Ayurvedic diet but it's both delicious and easy, two points in its favour.

I did yoga. No class, no tape, no DVD, just me and a few scribbled notes. The "Basic Yoga for Dummies" and "Beyond Basic Yoga for Dummies" DVDs have a certain pattern of practice that the instructor, Sara Ivanhoe, calls "the Daily Dozen". That is: there's a warm-up, and then a series of twelve asanas (postures), and then the warm-down and rest period (savasana). I like the idea, so I did my own choice of 12 asanas today. It felt great.

At the fitness club at lunchtime, I spent twenty minutes on the cross-trainer listening to "The Return of the King" read by Rob Inglis. It's wonderful. He has a deep, rich voice, and gets into character with each piece of dialogue. The only character I don't much like it with is Gimli: his voice is already deep, and when he deepens it that far, I worry that my batteries are getting low.

He also says "Sore-on" instead of "Sow-ron", an elementary Tolkien mistake. But I'm not complaining: he's such a good reader I'd even forgive him if he got Aragorn's name wrong, or Legolas'. Which he doesn't.

Cold weather is still with us. I love it. Funny: if this was April, we'd all be saying how warm it was. Since it's October, temperatures down towards the zero point feel frigid because it's been a while. It's wonderful walking weather. Finally I can walk briskly and not swelter. This kind of temperature - from about the freezing point to about ten degrees above - is my very favourite comfort zone. Yeah, another reason to love October.

maboroshimaki invited me to her place to watch "The Ring", a good horror movie. I don't watch horror movies. I'm a wimp. Just to prove I wasn't a wimp, I went to her place, and sat down with a cup of mint tea, and watched the beginning of the movie. It was way too scary for me. After twenty minutes or so I bailed. Hey, I had birds to feed, places to be - where I wasn't scared and babbling to cover it.

Such a wimp. I'm so glad there's no law that says I have to watch horror movies. They're invariably too scary or too silly, and sometimes both. (Shudder.)

Seventy-four days and two hours until "The Return of the King" starts in the movie theatres. Yes, I downloaded the countdown software, with its pretty skin showing Aragorn as kingly warrior. Well, almost kingly. Not king yet.