I've been catching up on my reading. Last week I found and read The Hummingbird Wizard by Meredith Blevins. It was a fun read with a great cast of characters, a bit of romance and mysticism thrown in for spice. The lead character is Annie Szabo, a 40-something widow who has moved to live in the country north of San Francisco. She makes plans to visit an old friend in the city and stumbles into a mystery that lands her smack dab in the middle of her dead husband's crazy family of Gypsies and flimflam artists. The characters and settings are reminiscent of the crazed community found in Stephanie Plum novels. The female characters are written especially feisty and strong. At the heart is a community of people who care about each other no matter who crazy they might be. There is a second book in the series that came out in hardcover last October. I'm asking Ravenhub for a copy for Valentine's Day.

Now I'm reading my favorite trash author: J.D. Robb. She has a new book in the "Eve Dallas" series called "Survivor in Death". I'm surprised I even bought this one because her last book made me believe the author had gotten tired of the characters and was just phoning it in. But, what the h, I bought it anyway. I'm halfway through the book and I'm getting just what I wanted: familiar characters in situations I know will pester them until they overcome them with strength and tenacity in the end!

This morning we went over to the Nobel Peace Prize festival at Augsburg College. It was extremely well-attended -- several hundreds of people who support peace from a religious perspective. I checked out the vendor tables: some activist antiwar groups but also a lot of faith-based initiatives involved in missions to needy areas around the globe. So many people willing to help out. If only we had "invaded" Iraq with all these energetic and hard-working people -- what a different reality we would be looking at today.

This afternoon we stopped by the bookstore and hung out with folks there for awhile. I was asked to write an e-mail to the local activist list to let people know we have nine of Ward Churchill's books in stock. Let readers judge for themselves what the man is saying, rather than hearing everything second hand. I'll send an e-mail out tomorrow.

We ate dinner in Dinkytown as the sun set. There must be a girls' hockey tournament at the University, because the restaurant was full of young women in matching hockey shirts. Now there's a world I would never meet outside of this community!

Back home by 7 pm (what swingers we are) and I checked out the new HBO movie "Lackawana Blues". Another group of characters making up an interesting community with an emphasis on helping each other through trying times. Once again, it is strong women who lead the way. Well, who else?