CaseyW

Starting to wind down day 83. It's been a good day. That bike ride home with my books wore me out a little but, like I said, it was worth it. I didn't go to a movie after that. I'll go tomorrow instead, as I'm also off then.

I got the books properly placed on my shelves--I'm a bit OCD about having them in alphabetical order by author. I used to own upwards of 10,000 books--in fact at one point about 7 years ago, I was living in a small individual house that had separate small apartments upstairs and downstairs. I made a deal with the landlord and rented both apartments for a bit lesser price--I lived upstairs and kept my library and office downstairs. After moving all those books from that place, (had to move because my irresponsibility/alcoholism kept me from paying my bills properly) I swore I'd never move a box of books again so I sold every single one of those books and just read books from the public library for a long time. But now that I'm not living in Austin anymore, I don't have such a great public library to borrow from so I've slowly started accumulating books again. Only have a few hundred now, nothing like my previous horde. I am about at the point where I need to go buy one more bookcase/shelf of some sort sometime soon.

Went to my folk's house for dinner and then to a absolutely FANTASTIC AA meeting. Seriously, I've been going to meetings off and on for 13 years now and this has to be one of the best meetings I've ever been to. Subject was the first half of step one--admitting we're alcoholics. Great mixture of newcomers and oldtimers, and the chair did a great job of getting a good mixture of both to speak. Heard a lot of great stuff and there was just a strong energy of recovery and hope and serenity in the room. Felt good.

Six or seven at a time is a lot. I don't usually venture over five at a time and after juggling that many for two or three weeks, I'll make myself calm down and slowly wean back down to two at a time. Then a month or two later, the count will start creeping up again. It's usually during times like right now when I'm not disliking either book I'm reading but not really loving either one as well that I usually end up picking up another book to add to the mix. Trying not to do that this time and just stick with the two. I'm almost done with Bukowski and the Beats anyways. Only have about 50 pages left.

Haha...looking at that description of my reading in the above paragraph, kinda reminds me of my constant relapses and attempts at moderation in my drinking.

Allie -- The idea of freezing nice meals ahead of time is a smart one. Let us know how some of the meals go! Since I live alone and only cook for myself most of the time, I usually just prepare small meals as I go. I've also been eating out too much lately, need to cut back on that.

ClosetCinephile -- glad to see you posting again and also enjoyed your thread over in the main forum where you got some good (and, honestly, a few not so good) answers to your questions about "the God thing." Gave me a lot to think about. My own concept of a higher power is still pretty vague right now. I believe in whatever it is that got recovering folks that I look up to sober, I guess.

About three years ago, I decided to read all of Stephen King's books in the order they were published since there are a lot of recurring characters and plot lines in them. I only read about one of his books a month--I think the last one I read was the short story collection Everything's Eventual. That was published in 2002, so I probably won't get to Finders Keepers for a year or two more. Only book of his I'm kind of itching to jump forward and read is 11/22/63. I've heard such good things about it and the subject matter floats my boat. But I'm sticking to my plan. The book will be waiting for me when I get to it--in fact, I just counted and it's 11 books away. So I should get to it in the next year.

Haven't decided yet if I want to read the Harper Lee book or not. To Kill a Mockingbird was one of my introductions to the world of adult literature when I was eight or nine years old and I've read it many times since then and still love it. I don't really like the story behind how this "new" novel is finally being published. Not sure if Miss Lee is really aware enough anymore to be giving permission for the publication. Afraid she's being taken advantage of. But I'm sure I'll probably break down at some point and read it.