Smoke on the water (and everywhere else) plus a book review

Living here now is like living smack dab in the middle of Hell. It's hot - near 100 degrees everyday - and it's smoky. The wildfires in Florida and Waverly, Ga., are still here. Apparently, going strong.

Here's another photo incase you don't believe me:

This is in the morning on what the Weather Channel assures me is a "sunny day." There is a bridge and a plant on the other side ... I can usually see those.

And another shot.

It's terrible. Every time I walk outside I get a headache. Of course, it's not so terrible that Josh won't go and play golf in it. I couldn't imagine. I'm certainly not running in the mess. It's the treadmill for me until the fires are out.

Anyway ... other than choking on smoke, the week has been standard. Work, work out, dinner, bed. Josh has been off all week (golfing every day). We've had lunch a time or two together so that's nice. I have also started working on a separate blog. It's called www.marathon-me.blogspot.com. It's going to take on the bulk of the marathon training talk. I doubt that many people care much about it. But if you do, check it out.

I've recently finished two books - "Tis" by Frank McCourt and "The Marathon Method" by trainer Tom Holland. I read that one more out of desperate panic than anything else. It has great information though.

"Tis" was a really good read.

Frank McCourt is the guy who wrote "Angela's Ashes." This book is the follow-up to that. "Angela's Ashes" told of his impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland. His father was a drunk and ended-up leaving. His mother had to beg for food to keep them alive. Like I said in my previous review, it had a lot of levity for a subject that was so serious. It won the Pulitzer Prize.

"Tis" begins when Frank comes to live in New York. It follows him through his early years a Biltmore Hotel bus boy, longshoreman, Army recruit and various other jobs that are less than glamourous. He gets into N.Y.U without a high school degree and graduates from there. Then, he starts teaching English to kids from the "wrong side of the track." Eventually he gets married, his brothers/mother moves to the U.S., etc.

All of this sounds kind of stale but honestly this guy is such a great story teller that he could be writing about paint drying and I'd read it. It wasn't as good as "Angela's Ashes" (Angela was his mother by the way) but it was worth reading.

* What's the best book you've read lately? Now I'm on to another non-fiction piece called "Ten Days in a Mad-House" it was written by a pioneering journalist (a women, no less) in the late 1880s. She - her pin name was Nelly Bly - took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to feign insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. I've just started but it's very good. Not "light summer reading" but very good.