Smelling Spring

We've had some melting this week. That is so lovely. I like seeing the water run, the snow piles going down. There is, however, a bit of side effects to all that melting. It smells WET! Well, that probably wouldn't be so bad, except now I know I live in a rural area. The wet brings out the lovely aroma of all the county's animals. Pigs. Cows. Chickens. and then there's just mud. It smells, too. I could smell it all the way from LeMars to Orange City. If only spring were just a bit closer, I would feel better about this. As it is we'll probably get more snow. More melting later. More wet. more smells. Ah well.

And on the smell side. Just like you can smell the difference between coffee and chocolate, you can tell the difference between pigs and cows. Lovely. Important too, I'm sure. You wanted to know this right?!

Reading and other such fun things

I just finished reading two books simultaneously. That was an interesting mind challenge. I found that I just plain get tired of the plot of one book and so I could quit and pick up the plot of the other. I also had the added challenge of forcing myself NOT to read the end of the mystery I was reading. (see reading resolution for 2009) That, my friend, was harder than I was expecting. I truly have a big habit of looking at the end whenever boredom with book begins to creep in. I mean I just picked up the new Vince Flynn book and read the first 20 pages and already I was thinking, "boy, I'll have to see how this turns out here rather quickly." AGRH. Stop it! So with the mystery I just finished, I had to force myself not to 'cheat' just because all of a sudden I needed to see the end. I did tend to skim more doing it this way, though.

The books I was reading were quite different from each other. Enough so, that switching back and forth was fairly easy. I read The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I'd seen as a movie so I knew how that one ended anyway, for a book club. Then I finished my first "Miss Dimity" mystery by Nancy Atherton. I really enjoyed it on the whole, but it was the one I had to commit to not peeking at the end. I don't think I'll make another resolution like that again soon. I mean, why does it matter if I look at the end ahead of time or not? Ok, well I admit, I was surprised by the ending and guess the pleasure of that would have been spoiled by looking at the end ahead of time.

See now, there's some perverse pleasure I get in knowing the ending ahead of time. I remember seeing "The Sixth Sense" for the first time. I turned the movie on with only two minutes left in the program. Only, I didn't know that. I had no idea where they were in the plot. So I knew the whole surprise to the movie when I actually got to see it through from the beginning. And I didn't mind that the surprise had been spoiled. There was no discomfort or disquiet about the whole mystery. And that's the way I feel about a book too.