"Your blog should be purple..."

(Perhaps to match the grapes in this picture.)

Taking a "blogthings" quiz is one way to know it's the middle of winter and you're seriously understimulated. How else would you find out how kissable you are (I didn't) what your word is (ditto) or how evil you are? (26%. No comment.)

Outside it's a dry moment between storms. In two weeks we've gone from a foot of snow to flooding, mountain passes blocked by avalanches, and a section of the main north-south freeway closed by high water for the second time in 14 months.

You can still get out of town on an airplane. The other day I made reservations to go to France in late April (a week in the Pyrenées followed by 2+ weeks in Paris.)

Meanwhile, there is artificial sunshine in a performance of "The Pearl Fishers" on Sunday. In many ways it's the perfect opera: melodramatic plot, a highly imaginary setting, and captivating music, including a tune you can hum as you leave - the duet for tenor and baritone, "Au fond du Temple Saint."

Bizet wrote the opera when he was 25. How intimidating.

Reading - Paris 1919, an absorbing history of the peace conference that followed World War I (and in many ways precipitated WWII.) Eighty years later in Transylvania you can still see graffiti saying "Down with the Treaty of Trianon," (which took Transylvania from Hungary and gave it to Romania.)

Cities of Salt, a novel about the beginnings of oil exploration and exploitation in Saudi Arabia, takes place in the early 1920's. (I hope to work my way up to the 21st century by the end of the year.)