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When I came home last night, I did a session of yoga, using a DVD that I play on my computer. That was fun, because Delia did it with me. She is so flexible that I'm envious: her Downward Facing Dog pose puts mine to shame. But she's much more wobbly than I am and kept falling out of the poses, which kept us laughing and gave me something to be smug enough myself.

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From today's Writer's Almanac: today is the birthday of Pico Iyer, who said, "The less conscious one is of being 'a writer,' the better the writing. And though reading is the best school of writing, school is the worst place for reading. Writing should . . . be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent . . . and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger."

Like that last bit, that writing is in the end an intimate letter to a stranger. That's certainly what LiveJournal feels like to me.

Although it's nice that many of you strangers out there are becoming good friends.

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Right now, I'm reading The Ropemaker, by Peter Dickinson, but I've been listening to Ruth MacKenzie's "Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden" (really cool music--I saw the show and loved it) and I've been thinking maybe I should read the Kalevala next. I know that it was a huge influence on Tolkien. Anyone out there done that? What translation should I choose?