Castle in the Clouds

When I imagined finishing my last graduate course, I envisioned many hours of bubble gum reading.  I'd indulge in every genre imaginable.  I talked a bit about my intended reading lists here and here .   As I look at those old posts, I'm happy to see that at least a few of them have been read.          I still intend to make my way through those lists before the year's end.  Those and several more.  After all, I set myself a ridiculous reading goal this year: 100 books.  Right now, I've read a whopping 34 titles.  That only leaves...66 to go before December 31.  With approximately 15 weeks to go, that means I'll need to read four and a half books a week.   Um. Yikes.  That's a lot of books and not a lot of time.  Now, I'm not saying it's impossible because I could absolutely select books that are easily consumed in a day or two.  Skinny books with low page counts come immediately to mind.  Also, some genres read easier than others.  

This is it.  The last post on the big 2013 family vacation. On our way home, we continued our small detour and ventured into the South Dakota Badlands.  We spent quite a few hours driving through the park, admiring bizarre landscape and its abundant wildlife.  While most of the mountainous formations were a pale ash color, there were splashes of color.  These pink and yellow layers in the rock were very striking. Looking at these pictures now, it's easy to let the imagination run a little wild.  Could this be some alien landscape undergoing human terra-forming? Hmm. Story fodder for later, perhaps.  They were so ready to go home and weren't quite as impressed as mom and dad at this point.  This changed, though, when the animals started to appear.  We might not have spotted these bighorn sheep if some other tourists hadn't been out photographing them.  They were several ridges away and their coats and horns really didn't stand out in st