no pictures today but rather... books books and more books. I spent most of the day scanning the aisles and touching paper bound goodness at Chapters and subsequently spending ($$) many hours worth of grown-up work! oh but it will be so worth it once I am back to my northern climes with uninterrupted time on my hands.

so what did I buy you ask?

hmmm...

The Bhagavad Gita and The Principal Upanishads - I have never read either of these sacred wisdom books, and to be honest until a few years ago, never knew of their existence. Not exactly on the required reading list of the United Baptist Constitution.

The Mandala of Being; Discovering the Power of Awareness. Mandala is Sanskrit for circle and in Eastern traditions indicates the whole of the self. Mandalas, not unlike a compass have four directions around a central focus - this book focuses on NOW at the centre and the four directions that take us away from the present, these being future, past, subject, object. "Subject-object is the psychological term for the inherently dualistic nature of our ordinary consciousness, in which, as soon as we become aware of ourselves as the 'subject' me, we simultaneously become aware of the 'object' you."

Words and Rules; The Ingredients of Language. This one came from the bargain bin for 4.99! And primarily I want to read it for professional development seeing as I will be teaching grade 3 literacy in the coming school year - a seemingly radical departure from quadratic functions and trigonometry! My expectation was that this would be an unbearably boring read but thus far has been compelling and full of wit. The author (Steven Pinker) has published several meaty language research based books and writes in a conversational style. He is a native of Montreal and studied at McGill and Harvard. He currently teaches at MIT.

Math for Mystics. Okay, I'm still a bit of a geek! But this is cool - it is all about the mystic inspired mathematics regarding the moon, days of the week, magic squares, templar codes, Pythagoreans, Fibonacci, geometric solids...

Buddhism; A Concise Introduction. I've already devoured a good chunk of this book. On a personal and spiritual level, I'm highly interested in Buddhism. This is more or less Buddha for dummies but none-the-less is well written and has captured my attention.

Creating Money; Keys to Abundance. So who isn't into the law of attraction? This book seemed completely solid right up until the part I realize that it is 'written' by the authors' spirit guides! Just in case you were interested, the spirit guides' names are Orin and DaBen!

And to bring balance to this heavy load of pseudo-intellectualism razzle-dazzle, I also bought 5 funny/somewhat trashy hopefully lusty sex filled brain candy autopilot I can't quite believe this passes for fiction novels.

Wherever you are, breathe and smile!