I had a slow day today. Heather had a candle party to go to in Toronto and Sandy went with her. Tom drove them and went to visit his friend Remi while the party was underway. They planned to be back by 5:00 PM.
I had several books I was looking for. I wasn't familiar with any large retailers in Woodstock, so I headed to Chapters in Kitchener, about 30 miles east on the 401. The store was moderately busy as I browsed the paperback Science Fiction/Fantasy shelves.
The first book I was looking for was Towers of Midnight, Book 13 in the Wheel of Time series started by Robert Jordan. Jordan passed away after the eleventh book of what was supposed to be a twelve book series, but he left many notes on how it was to end. His wife, who was also his editor, engaged Brandon Sanderson to finish the work but they decided that Book 12 needed to be split into three parts, hence the thirteenth and fourteenth volumes. Towers of Midnight was released in 2010 in hardcover but just came out last month in paperback.
The second book was Robert Sawyer's Hybrids, volume three of his Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy. This explores the idea of a rift between two parallel Earths which divided 40,000 years ago. In ours, CroMagnon Man was successful while, in the other, Neantherthal Man prevailed. Interestingly, the rift happened in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory deep in our Creighton Mine. This local touch added to what was already a fascinating tale.
The last book was Destroyer of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner. It is the third in a set of four (so far) labelled the Ringworld Prequel Series. It tells the tales already told by Niven in Known Space
from a totally different perspective. Other than Heinlein, Niven is my favourite SciFi writer.
Luckily, I found all three.
With my new books in hand, I headed back to Woodstock. I stopped at Mickey D's and picked up an Angus burger on a ciabatta bun for lunch. Then it was back to the house where I spent the afternoon reading and napping.
Kim and Mike stopped by with the girls later in the day. They had been to a kids' Christmas Party at African Lion Safari hosted by Kim's employer, Gore Mutual Insurance. They stayed for a while but, bonehead me, I didn't take any pictures. As I have said before, I really need to concentrate on improving this.
The rest of the gang didn't get back until 8:00 PM. Tom and I settled in to watch the recording of the final NASCAR race of the season from Homestead, Florida. Unfortunately, there were enough rain delays that the race went overtime and we didn't get to see the ending. That was too bad because the Championship ended in a points tie between Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards. Stewart became the Champion because he had won more individual races, but it was a great showing by both drivers. Now I will suffer race withdrawal until February.
We'll be heading home tomorrow so we were in bed by 11:00.
Today's Route (62 van miles):
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5 years ago
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