tmcg

Other people's books I just bought: Steel Helix by Ann Tonsor Zeddies. Maximum Ice by Kay Kenyon. The Changeling Plague by Syne Mitchell.

Other people's posts I liked recently:

fionagh on why sleep is good (also George W. Bush's resume)

akaspeedo on amusing word-processor tricks

papersky on operating systems.

'Do you remember,' she was saying, in the hushed whisper the hour demanded, but with something even more secret in its intimacy, 'the night we pledged our troth? That was December, too. I've been thinking of it ever since I knew you were here--a Benedictine monk! Who would ever have dreamed it would end so! But you stayed away so long!'

It was certainly time to go. Cadfael retrieved his hand gently, made her a soothing good night, and discreetly withdrew, before worse could befall him. Let her by all means attribute his vocation to the loss of her own delightful person, for the conviction would stand by her well until her world was restored in safety. But as for him, he had no regrets whatever. The cowl both fitted and became him.

He let himself out and returned enlarged through the chill and sparkle of the frosty night, to the place he had chosen, and still and for ever now preferred.

Behind him, as he neared the gatehouse, a meagre shadow detached itself from the shelter of the eaves of Richildis's house, and slid contentedly along the road after him, keeping well to the side in case he looked back. But Brother Cadfael did not look back. He had just had a lesson in the perils of that equivocal exercise; and in any case, it was not his way.

--Ellis Peters, Monk's Hood