Friday! And I've made some research progress this week, which makes me very happy.

We may get freezing rain again this weekend; I plan to stay in and read and knit.
I do need to run out this afternoon for various things - I think I'm going to do the "bigger shopping" (out of town) even though rain's threatening. I went to the local Mart of Wal yesterday afternoon to replenish the matches I keep on hand for emergencies and THEY WERE SOLD OUT. And the girl working the shelves didn't seem to think they'd get more before next week.

I mean, yeah. We've had an ice storm and stuff. But it kind of spooks me a little that the big main store in my town is out of such an essential emergency item. So I'm going to try Tar-zhey, and failing that, one of the bigger grocery stores down south.

I started reading "Song of the Dodo" while proctoring an exam yesterday (a placement type exam - no, I'm not giving exams in my classes already!). It's about island biogeography and it's one of those books that makes me feel like I need to read the rest of it RIGHT NOW. (Of course, I also have "Why Buildings Fall Down," which I need to finish reading. And the current mystery novel - one of the Commissario Brunetti mysteries by Donna Leon. They're set in Venice, which makes them interesting - the different culture and all.* And I started "Lucky Jim" because I saw it on the shelf and remember having been told how funny it is...I think I'm going to have to leave that one for the moment, but I will come back to it, once I'm done with my other books.)

(*Amazon refers to these - and also to the Ngaio Marsh mystery novels as "police procedurals." Which seems funny to me. I always envisioned a police procedural as being very dry, almost a textbook of, "this is how real cops do this thing." If anything, the Brunetti mysteries are anti-procedurals, considering how Sra. Elettra manages to circumvent a lot of the regulations concerning obtaining information. And I really read the Inspector Alleyn mysteries not for how the police works, but for Alleyn's movement in (usually) the upper-middle class British world between the wars, or his interaction with Mr. Fox or with Agatha Troy Alleyn.

Perhaps a "police procedural" is just applied to any mystery where it's investigated by, like, an official police-person and not an independent operator or a "talented amateur." [I sometimes have a hard time suspending disbelief in the "talented amateur" mysteries, at least the ones set in the current day. It seems to me that the police would be too much concerned with not contaminating the crime scene, not having evidence that they could use to identify the killer get out, etc., etc. to be willing to let some professor or bookie or craft-shop owner or chef go nosing around in their business.]

That said - I always thought it would be a bit fun to take a stab at writing mysteries where a college professor - or perhaps administrator - was the "talented amateur" who figures things out.)