Time to Stretch a Little

So I finished the paper I was supposed to this week. The immediate burden. On the goddess Asherah in early Isrealite religion (think around the time of Solomon to when the Israelites were exiled by Babylonia). Yeah, there was a goddess. The Bible didn't talk much about her. I thought it was interesting, and wrote on it.

Except that, after I'd gotten approval for the outline I had turned in, I had typed it out, and it turned out to be... 5... pages. When the minimum was 8. So it took a little bit of scrambling to do those last three pages, including a good deal of today. But it's done. And I turned in my thesis on Mnday. With that, I only have end-of-the-term assignments:

2 papers
2 exams

Then I'm done. *jig* I know a lot of other people have more strenuous final exam activities, so I don't go shouting it to everyone. But I've had those too... and I'm relieved to have one semester before graduate school where I can really relax at the end of it. Especially with going to the wedding of two good friends next weekend.

A Book Recommendation

What? I've actually had time to read something for pleasure since spring break that was longer than a newspaper article or a short story? Yes. I've been reading it at a crawl, but with the book due back to the library Friday, I had to put more effort into it. So after going to the bank today, after I was done with my paper, I reached this fork in the sidewalk. I could go left, and go to the Golden Roast, and hunker down and read it. I know people that go there on Wednesday, and I could hang out with them if I shied away from reading.

But I was tired of shying away. After throwing my pen in the air and determining myself to go wherever it pointed, I disregarded which way it pointed, and went right. I walked to the Botanical Garden.

I didn't exactly know I was going there at first. But it was the farthest place I could walk and stay on nice green grass without turning around, and it had been a while since I'd been there. True, I'll be there in only a week and change (for the wedding), but it was good to go alone.

It was a good atmosphere for the book. I did get distracted at one point from reading, but it was one of the cats (whose name as called by a caretaker was "Indigo") who kept accosting my hand. A fluffy, black cat that would look up whenever I retracted my hand and meow, not the plainitive (1) "Why aren't you paying attention to me?" of Nona (Leslie, Becky, and Derek's cat), but a simple friendly, "Hi. Pet me."

So I've done about everything but talk about the book. It's Rose Daughter, by Robin McKinley. Leslie recommended it after we saw the old French movie La Belle et la Bete. The movie was good because it was fantastical, even as it kept to the traditional line. Rose Daughter breaks many of those lines, but both what is kept and what changes is... refreshing. I don't want to say anything more. It isn't a retelling of a fairy tale, so much as a reinvention of one, an innovation of its own.

(1) I am thinking of this word, I think, but I wonder where I got it. The dictionaries I checked don't have it, Google doesn't acknowledge it. Am I spelling it incorrectly? I've always thought it meant something like, "demanding of attention, or even pleading" at least in connotation.