Multiply 365 Day 271 - Reading rainbow

Just sitting around watching Charlie Rose, because my Friday nights rock more than your Friday nights do. Actually I am going to try to turn in relatively early, I have a Deluca's breakfast planned for the morning and what should be a long day ahead of me in the morning. While I have many of the day to day tasks at work caught up, it is time for me to make a serious run at fixing the computer system at work once and for all. No invoices are awaiting me when I go in, most of the price changes are already done, I should be able to focus almost solely on the computer system, which is nice. I can't remember the last time I was this caught up on things.

Being caught up is good, because it means I can spend more time on my book, “1493” which has been a fascinating read to this point. The book basically deals with what is called “The Columbian Exchange”, that is, how the world was changed when Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas. Sure, there are the obvious changes that come from settling the land, but there are also changes by what the newcomers brought with them, such as animals and diseases. Likewise the exchange goes both ways, so the book also explores how what was found here was taken to other parts of the world and the effects of that as well. Simple things like earthworms, which were not native to North America and how their introduction changed things like farming, likewise for all of the use of tomatoes and tomato sauces in things like Italian cooking, the tomato itself came not from some place in Europe, but from South America. I am still very early into the book, right around the colonization of Jamestown and the introduction of livestock (horses, cattle, pigs) and diseases like malaria from Europe, and the introduction of Virginia tobacco into England and how that helped to initiate chattel slavery. Fascinating reading for the like of me, but not stuff that I can sit down and bang out a couple hundred pages, even if my schedule allowed for such free time.

Speaking of which, now would be one of those free times, so maybe I should sneak in some prime reading time. Nite.