Back, Having Painted With All the Colors of the Wind

The Presbyterian Woman Annual Retreat high has been somewhat tempered by my acquiring a migraine (at great personal cost. hah! puns). So as I lay here in my bed, helped not at all by ibuprofen and being extraordinarily bored by endless Facebook updates regarding the Super Bowl, I thought I'd update my book blog on — surprise! — something only vaguely book-related.

First off, look at this:

Calm and peaceful the retreat was! As one might expect. Hail, Wisconsin and so forth. I saw stars! I live in downtown Chicago; do you know the last time I saw stars? The answer would be NEVER. NEVER STARS. But thanks to the kickass app Star Walk, I went out into the freezing Wisconsin night last night, aimed my phone at the sky and said "A-HA! Castor and Pollux, I see you there by the moon!" Then I dragged an 80-year-old woman outside to look at them with me. And behold, it was magical.

My church, coupled with another church, does this retreat every year. I usually go with some kind of reading aspirations, and then instead end up drunk, talking about young adult lit at 1 in the morning with some 40-year-olds. One of them was 50 pages from the end of The Hunger Games series, went to read it before falling asleep, and the next morning at breakfast stopped me while I was holding my tray and just said "I finished it." To which I could only respond "I'M SORRY I COULDN'T TELL YOU."

Anyway. I got in touch with nature. I hugged a tree. And I have this picture, which I think makes me look like I'm about to share why YOU should play a part in saving our wetlands:

"Oh hey. Didn't see you there."

I decided (...again) to be less judgey as a person, but before that happened, everyone had to fill out posters with information about themselves, and on it was 'Favorite Book.' Our seminary assistant Maureen and I walked around, reading people's, and in response to me judging everyone's books, Maureen said "I'm gonna find yours and change it to Twilight."

Well-played, madam. Well-played.

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