After I eat breakfast, I usually start my day with a 30 minute walk followed by checking the computer for email and Facebook messages. Then I go to several regular blogs and websites to see if anything interesting was posted. While this cuts into my morning work (when I should be researching and writing two books and a novelette), it is really enjoyable interacting with other people online. I can state without doubt that my social life is much more active because of the internet than it ever was previously. While blogging and posting comments on FB is time-consuming, I would not give them up for anything.

However, I will not be posting here for another two weeks since we are leaving Tuesday for another week of camping. In July we went north to Lake George, but this time we are going south to LBI (that’s Long Beach Island for you non-Jerseyans ☺) with our same friends Alan and Denise. However, this time our families will be joining us for various parts of the week, so we could have as many as 14 people at the campground at some point during the week. The last time both our families camped together was in New Orleans 15 years ago, so this should be fun.

I seem to have two aftereffects of the movie Julie/Julia. First, since I really loved the book Heat which was about cooking Italian food and the life of chef Mario Batali, I want to read My Life in France which is an autobiography of Julia Child during her formative years learning to cook. I think it might be fascinating.

Second, while I have no interest in French cooking, I do love Italian cooking and have more than a few Italian cookbooks. I have made dozens of Italian recipes during the decades, many of them inherited from my mother, but there are many which I have never made. For example–and I am ashamed to admit this–I have never made homemade pasta, even though I have my mother’s old hand-cranked pasta machine. So before this summer ends, perhaps as soon as this weekend, I intend to do so. I am sure I will report on it right here!