A duck in the gardens tonight
Online shopping really is great for enlivening an otherwise ho-hum day at work. I was sitting at my desk this morning enduring yet another day of mental inertia when the book I ordered from Amazon a few weeks back arrived. Yay. I'd nearly forgotten about it, so it was a nice surprise.
It's a very nice book too - the 150th anniversary illustrated edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. It's cloth-bound and has beautiful colour photographs tracking the seasons at Walden Pond (near Concord, Massachusetts, US). It's now sitting on my bedside table while I finish the book I'm reading.
I'm currently reading Capital by Kristin Otto, which is about the time from 1901-1927 when Melbourne was the capital city of Australia. I'm not very far in yet but I read about how Prime Minister Alfred Deakin used to walk from his house into town across "Anderson Bridge". That's right near me! I walk that way to work too! The house he lived in is a few minutes walk from my place, on Walsh Street.
Walden was a reward to myself for sticking to my allergy elimination diet. This week's reward was a half-hour massage which I had at lunch time today. Hmmm...what will I give myself next week? I'm thinking either a professional eyebrow shaping or manicure, things I wouldn't normally pay for.
Rewarding yourself is fun!
2 comments:
My mum actually lived in Deakin's house as a uni student. By then it housed something like 15 people, each with their own bedroom, and it had three kitchens and a billiards room and all sorts of stuff. Must have been huge! She lived there not long before it was torn down.
Sounds like it would have been fun....in a somwhat crowded and noisy way.
Oh, so the original house is gone? (No doubt that's what the plaque on the front fence of the site says, if I'd read it properly.)What a shame. I wonder if the interwebs can deliver me a picture of what it looked like?
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