Clap for Flickr, Stuck in Catch-22

I have been out of touch with the blogging circuit this past week. Now, this is a statement that should not be taken literally. In fact, my primary leisure activity last week has been the creation of another blog, not a sole/soul commentary kind of blog but a community blog. It is still work-in-progress since I have to figure out the best way to retain the community pictures on flickr and still make the blog page load faster. It is so much fun to be involved in the creative process for a group activity. I particularly enjoyed the time that Suku and I spent in writing comments for the pictures. More on that blog once we are ready to let it be known. However, you get the idea when I say that I have been out of the blogging loop - I have not posted a thing here nor have I read anyone else's posts. Before I jump to the next paragraph and thought, here is a tiny paean to Flickr - if you have not tried it yet, wake up! I found it far easier to manage and use than Hello. I am still comparing merits but flickr deserves this first-cut praise.

I am admitting in black and white that I have not read Joseph Heller's Catch-22 yet. Yes, I know it is a classic. And yeah, "How could you miss it?" is a perfectly valid question to shoot at me. The answer is of course that I just did not get to it yet. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine did a very successful pitch for this book and I rushed to the bookstore the same evening and bought myself a copy. And I have not read it yet! Some books are like that. You just need to be in the right frame of mind when you pick it up. What can send you into raptures can also send you running, depending on your frame of mind at that point. So I do not know if Catch-22 is destined to grace my bookshelf along with other unread 'spotlighters' like Midnight's Children, Half a Life, Soul Mountain, The Vicar of Wakefield...phew, you know now how much I actually read :);until there comes a point when I pick it up, go into raptures, and shake my head in puzzlement at my stupidity. For now, it is a Catch-22 situation :)

Okay, yawn! Time to sleep off my travel fatigue (caused by a quick day and a half trip to the delightful temple hub of Tamilnadu, Kumbakonam). I seem to be thinking of a lot of things to say now. Tomorrow is a better day!