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Payday to most Amercians is almost a sacred holiday matched only by the excess of Black Friday. A worker puts in their time if not necessarily all their energy and ability and when the dawn rises on that looked for time for a short time the future seems bright.

So when our new owners inform us payday is now on Friday and no longer Thursday some small grumbles--mostly to do with extra trips to the credit union since the Long Suffering One gets HER pay every Thursday the mantra change ...

One thing which I encounter quite frequently in literary experiences and which has always baffled me, is that it seems whenever a character within a book commits an act which is morally questionable, people are quick to forgive them or excuse them on the basis that they are "only human" or see thier misdeeds as as proof of thier humanity. I have never really understand this mode of thinking.

Now I do not think that characters should all be portrayed as being perfect as this ...

This time of year at a literature forum people think about book challenges and plan to read something they have wanted to read for a long time. I don't think I have the time to make a personal list but what I will be reading in the next 4 months is:

Candide ou l'optimisme by Voltaire
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Gunnlaðarsaga by svava jakobsdóttir
The Last World by Christoph Ransmayr
Blóðhófnir by Gerður Kristný (poetry)
The Antelope wife by Louise ...

I am relatively new to reading Thomas Hardy and I have developed something of a love hate relationship with him. While on the one hand I acknowledge his talent as a writer, and think his prose is beautifully written. His stories in themselves are engaging and his writing is easy to read and never feels truly tedious.

I have not truly disliked anything of his I have read, but the problem I have is often I find his heroes/heroines to be infuriating and intolerable. There is a certain ...

For some reason I could not log into the site last night which was just as well as nothing too exciting happened yesterday other then being very busy at work last night with no real war stories to make it entertaining.

However today would be memorable for a couple of things.

First off Ruth had a donut spare put on her SUV the other day to await Thursday payday in order to get a new tire (ended up being a used one). I had offered up the truck again to her to go get ...