Hey. I guess Easter's as good a time as any to stop hibernating. Precedents have been set. Didn't realize I'd be coming across this bit of crappy news though. Apparently Paul Hester, the drummer from Crowded House, was found dead hanging in a park in Melbourne. And that just sucks.

During my absence I finished Crime and Punishment. Winter seems a good time for Russian literature. I kept a frosty bottle of Stolichnaya in the freezer. I bought turnips, beets, rye bread, and perogies. I kept a cd of lessons in the car. I used the word for "you're welcome" the other day and ended up having a conversation with the man about how he drove a passenger train for years in Ukraine before moving to Kansas.

I have been on a reading rollercoaster. Kurt Vonnegut led to Dostoevsky followed by Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins, then Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus. Today I began the nearly 800 page Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I forgot the two books of essays on early Vonnegut and the one on C&P but maybe I should keep that to myself. I may have mentioned I found those Vonnegut books to be far more depressing this time around. As a twentysomething did the humour innocculate me against the elements I find so heartwrenching today? There is more I'd like to write about this but I need to go to bed. I will say I was surprised at how good the Douglas Coupland book was. He lost me with a few books and had me questioning what it was that had initially attracted me to his writing so I was apprehensive about starting this one. But I don't know...it somehow feels more real than his other books.