• Mood: relaxed
• Music: Stranglers—Always the Sun

SOMETHING SOFT OR SPONGY OR SHAPELESS

What do you all think about the increasing use of advertising on all kinds of blogs? I find they make sites with good content hard to read and full of distracting ugliness. I can understand why people feel compelled to move in that direction, especially if it's true that the advertising really does pay for the webhosting costs, or more, but I think it's a real shame. Some of them I can read on my LJ friends page thanks to their RSS feeds, without the annoying and ugly advertising, but others only give a few lines and I still have to click over to the site to read the full content anyway. I confess to never once having clicked on an advertisement on someone's blog, and find it hard to imagine doing so, frankly, since I'm only there for the writing, and sometimes the link recommendations to other journals and blogs.

Something I always find difficult, yet exciting: lending beloved books. While I WANT other people to read them, and am thrilled when they do so and love them as much as I did, there is something very painful about letting my OWN copies out of my hands. What if they never come back? What if I can't re-read them when I get the urge? I would rather buy people their own NEW copies than lend out my own, if truth be told. And yes, as if you couldn't have guessed, I keep a list of the loans. :P

Driving through the twisty back roads of the hilly Scanian landscape with copper-colored beech leaves swirling in the wake of the car, we went to Kristinehof Castle today to view the National Geographic 100 Best Photos World Tour. We only had an hour, as Kathey and I had to be in Malmö at 1 for an appointment. The castle is out in the middle of absolute nowhere and it's not really a castle, it's a big orange manor house in need of a paint job. We were very rushed and didn't even see the whole thing, but I've seen most of the famous photos before and the best part was a video detailing the search for "the Afghan girl" whose image on the cover of the magazine was one that I saved when I was a teenager and still have in a notebook somewhere.

There is something about massage that is so painfully delicious, it's like a drug I can't get enough of. It's like living through your skin, with your entire being concentrated on the muscle that is being pressed just so. A very tall English gal named Michaela was my masseuse today for the first time, and she was gooooooood. I was putty in her hands. Gelatin. Mush. We had agreed on (and paid for!) half an hour, but I was under her thumbs for an HOUR AND A HALF: *happpppy siiiiiiiiiigh* Because Kathey and I were both getting massages, I had another hour and a half afterwards to curl up under a blanket on her sofa upstairs and read my book. I can't imagine a more delightful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.