What a gorgeous day. A bit chilly (high forties), but bright and sunny, and I had the day off! Big frelling deal. It would have been the perfect day to drive up to Portland as I'd planned to visit the local lighthouses, but since it rained cats and dogs Saturday and Sunday, I had outdoor stuff, like mowing the lawn, to do instead. Drat. Maybe next weekend.

I did get some stuff accomplished. My office is now reasonably tidy, and I removed the big plastic set of storage shelves that was in there down to the basement, so it's not as cramped as it was. The only thing left to do is to haul the resultant trash off to the dumpster, but that'll have to wait until I get the stainless steel shelves I picked up for work out of the back of my truck.

I did finally finish reading Tom Clancy's latest, Red Rabbit, which I didn't hate. The book is about the attempted assassination of John Paul II back in the eighties, and is really the first time Clancy's had Jack Ryan in an actual historical situation. There's a couple of problems with that. First of all, we already know what happens to the pope. Second, with the exception of the pope getting shot, not a single thing even comes close to going wrong for the good guys in the entire book. It is a thriller without any suspense whatsoever. Plus, there are no planes, tanks, missiles, or submarines anywhere in the book. What's up with that? Boring! In the past, I usually only takes me a couple of days finish one of Clancy's books the first time through, because I just keep turning the pages. They are interesting to me. This one wasn't. The fact that I started it in August sometime, and am just finishing it now (having read the last two hundred pages this weekend) is telling.