I have no idea why this took me so long to read. I enjoyed it all the way through, and I thought the dramatic culmination of all the threads at the end really well done.
When we got back from the gym, we lit a fire, one whose smoke went where it's meant to. RDC turned the chair to face the fire, and I lay my neglected yoga mat on the floor with the coarse-woven Mexican blanket on top. I thought I might still want the fleece blanket, because I am insane. My feet, more than six feet from the fire, did want it; my arms and face, stretched toward the fire, baked as I finished my book.
I love a fire. A particularly true line from A Single Shard is that there are two things people cannot resist watching: fire and falling water, always changing, always the same.
Precor Elliptical 45' @ 12/20 resistance and 20/20 incline, 5750 strides total. I got competitive with the fellow next to me, who held onto the handles and whose resistance was a fraction of mine. But we got on our machines at about the same time and eventually I noticed that he had a higher stride-per-minute rate than I. I might not have felt compelled to exceed him had he not been overweight (and wearing black socks). He left at 35' and I did my 45', plus 3' or so of cooldown.