I'm back. I did finish a couple things over break (the agonizingly-long-to-knit Faceted Rib socks being one). I'll post some pictures starting tomorrow.

Break was good, but I was struck by how much more humid it is in Central Illinois than it is here. It's hotter here, but by midafternoon, what humidity there is has generally declined...up where my parents live, humidity levels of 80% or so (with temperatures in the mid 80s) were not unusual. My body does not like humidity.

I ate a lot of sweet corn on the cob while I was up there. Few people grow it around here (I think it's probably too dry; sweet corn is a pretty water-intensive crop) and so you don't see it at farmstands the way you do in Illinois. (And grocery store corn on the cob - you can pretty much forget it. If it's been picked more than a couple days ago, I'd just as soon go with frozen or canned). There's one family - I think they're from Manito? - that bring corn to the local farmer's market up there. And it is really, really good.

Sweet corn is one of my favorite things, especially when it's really fresh like that.

I didn't do a whole lot, other than knit (and do a little sewing, as you'll see later). I guess I did go out and do "Japanese beetle duty" most days - the beetles are really bad up there this summer, and because my mother does not like to spray chemicals (and thinks that those traps-with-attractants probably actually BRING the beetles rather than merely killing them), a couple times a day someone goes out to the garden with an old coffee can with water and a bit of soap in it, and knocks all the beetles they can find into the can.

It smells really bad after it's sat for a day or so. I remember doing something similar as a kid; my mom would pay a penny per beetle (now that I think of it - did she actually dump them out to count them? Or did she go by our counts? Or did she just estimate?). (I also got paid a penny per cabbage worm I caught, or bean beetle, or potato beetle. It seemed almost a shame to kill the potato beetles; they were kind of fat and ungainly and their stripes made them almost cute).

The woodchucks - at least, one of them (I think it's one of the babies, mostly grown up) is still there, but it seems not to have gone back into the garden after it was fenced off. And there's a small rabbit, though it seems to prefer the clover in the yard to anything else, and it's cuter than the woodchuck, anyway.

I did get to see my brother - he ran down for one evening for a visit (My sister-in-law didn't get to come; apparently the DEA is pushing a lot of overtime to try to clear up some of the back caseload and it's cheaper for them to tell people to do overtime than to hire an additional person, I guess - so her hours are longer right now. Which I suppose is good money-wise for them, but having worked a few "overload" semesters myself, I know it's not fun). He brought a bunch of stuff he had found using the fancy metal detector he had gotten for his birthday, including a riale (spelling? The old Mexican coin) from the 1770s that was found at my sister-in-law's family homestead in Ohio. (How did it get there? My brother says that riales were used as currency before a settled US currency, seeing as they were silver)

He also brought his laptop with all the pictures from a trip they took - my sister in law had to go to Quantico for training (it sounds more exciting than it is) and he had some frequent-flier miles saved up, so he flew out for a few days to visit her over one of the weekends, so they saw the sights in Washington and went to Williamsburg. My brother had bought himself a digital SLR (it was one of the Canon models) and had taken some really spectacular photos of the various monuments in Washington and the buildings and gardens at Williamsburg with it. (I don't know if he's just that much better a photographer than I am, or if the quality of the camera is part of it, but now I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, I'll take some of this year's tax refund that is sitting in my savings account and put it towards one...I don't know. Part of me wants a nice little camera I can tuck in a pocket...but I would LOVE to be able to take those gorgeous, precise-focus shots of flowers or bugs or handknits or whatever). So I guess the upshot is: want new camera, but not sure what I want.

I also rediscovered my love of the Food Network as "background noise" while knitting or whatever. I tend to forget about it here - it's one of the higher-numbered channels - but it's one of the lower channels on my parents' system, and my mom likes it. I may never cook much of the stuff shown (and I still dislike the "contest" shows where people are yelling at each other and where There Will Be Tears) but there is something restful about watching people make stuff. (And I still like "Unwrapped," even if I've already seen a lot of the episodes).

I did read a couple books. I still haven't finished the huge WWI book ("The Guns of August," which is really more about the beginnings of WWI than anything) but I did read a couple of mysteries. And I re-started "Jacquard's Web," which I had started a year or more ago and then lost the thread of when I had to put it down for a while because I got involved with a project.

The first of the mysteries was John Billheimer's first Owen Allison mystery, "Contrary Blues." I had gotten the fourth book in the series free as part of a deal from the (late, lamented) A Common Reader. I started reading it and decided I wanted to read the books in order (unlike some mystery series, it seemed that certain relationships would make more sense that way). So I found used copies of the first three from Powell's and bought them.

I'm not sure how I feel about the series. This first novel is definitely gritter and rougher than the fourth (at least, as far as I had read it). There's lots of cursing, which I suppose has some verisimilitude (it's set in rural coal-mining West Virginia) but I admit I found the level of it a bit jarring. (Then again, I may be unnaturally clean-mouthed).

The other distressing - though, I suppose, perhaps also true-to-life thing - was the level of sheer corruption. Corruption in the town government, corruption in the agency that Owen worked for, corruption of his immediate predecessor (who was also one of the murder victims whose death had to be investigated). A truly detestable man who was lauded in the press (oh, more corruption there) as a "disabled rights advocate" when he was really mainly a nuisance (and likely "disability pay" cheat). There was really no one to like in the novel - not even really Owen Allison himself.

I don't know. I guess I'm a bit of a Pollyanna in that I want at least one good solid "likable" character in a novel, someone who doesn't have easily compromised ethics or who isn't inclined to be a nasty person. Again, the view Billheimer writes about may be more realistic...but I don't want it to be the "realistic" view.

I also read yet another one of the Hamish MacBeth mysteries - Death of a Celebrity. This book was more enjoyable, from the standpoint that Macbeth is fairly likable, his eventually-to-be-girlfriend Elspeth is fairly likable, there are town figures who, if a bit quirky are mostly basically good. The "detestable" figures were mostly "outsiders" - television people. (Though there were a few Highlanders with bad secrets, as it turned out).

I wonder, how many mystery novels (especially "cozies") trade on the idea that the "outsiders" are the ones that cause the harm?

Though then again - novels with a strong protagonist not averse to traveling (like Hercule Poirot) or living in a metropolitan area where a diversity of people can come to him (like Nero Wolfe) can have good, dynamic novels without either finding that everything is "rotten to the core" (like in the Billheimer novel) or that it's "those darn outsiders mucking things up" (as seems to be not too uncommon in the Hamish Macbeth novels I've read).

I will say, as enjoyable as the Macbeth novels are, they're not terribly taxing to read. I read this last one in its entirety yesterday evening on the train. (And that includes taking an hour or so out to eat dinner).

I also read about half of "Jacquard's Web," which discusses how the jacquard loom (a loom that used punched cards to allow for "picture weaving") was really a forerunner of the computer...right now it's mainly talking about Babbage and his difference engine and his (unbuilt) analytical engine, and Ada Lovelace.

I have to admit I like the idea of there being a strong link between the weaving of cloth and computing. (Though as the author points out: if it were not for Jacquard, we'd still have got computers eventually, though maybe via a different path than they took).