I received a curious envelope in the mail.
“In the mail” is a bit redundant, don’t you think?
Not at all, dear interlocutor. You can receive envelopes in many ways. Someone can hand you an envelope. You could fashion one out of your own paper, or even purchase some. I have a small box in my desk at the office.
OK, fine. You received a curious envelope in the mail.
Yes I did. It had a certain texture.
Texture?
Not like a golf ball, which has that dimpled surface for aerodynamic properties, but the opposite of that.
Surely it has some purpose, this round skid plate design. Surely I am meant to stand on it, securely, squarely, confidently, while I’m opening the rest of my correspondence.
Sure, plus, it makes it stand out.
You’re right! I felt it right away.
And we’re talking about it.
Yes, we are.
So job done.
I didn’t tell you who it was from though, did I?
And that’s just how exciting today was. Emails, a few conversations about future to do lists, watching people watch the World Cup. Laughing at people. I also wrote a letter and sent that off. No fancy envelope, though.
I got in a little bike ride this evening, if nothing else to see how my knee would feel doing its part after I aggravated it in last night’s run. Stairs felt the same. Walking didn’t hurt. Getting up and down to clean a few things around the house felt as it always does. But maybe, I figured, the repetition of riding 25 miles would tell me something different. So I tapped out 25 easy miles. No pain. Lots of gain.
By my count, I’ll have the opportunity to ride nine or 10 more times before the end of the year.
If that holds up, and I hold up, I just might set a new personal best for milage in a year.
It’s time to check in on Rick Atkinson’s The British Are Coming. This is an incredible descriptive bit about General Charles Lee. You could look at this in a few ways. How many different ways to you need to describe a person? You could note how this is about personality, and not about his physical description. You’re right about that, the physical part shows up elsewhere. Begging the further question, how tightly can you pack in facts about a man? (And, not pictured, this goes on for a bit, as it is our introduction to his trotting into Charleston in 1776.) But I have a different question.
How much time did Atkinson put in the simple, thorough, act of pulling together this description.
It’s always thick. It’s never burdensome. I love how the man writes.
I am 340 pages into this 564-page first installment of his American Revolution trilogy. (No word on when the second book is due out.) There’s something new to learn everywhere, here. And, even then, you know you’re not getting everything. Something to think about over the next two hundred pages.
Waiting in the wings, the latest installment of just about the only fiction I read.
