Friday, 23 May 2003

no bike today

Both of us had some sort of relapse and I could face neither my bike nor contacts on Friday morning. I have to find my bus route's new, less frequent times. But I drove. I should have remembered to call Peaberry's for a big bag of grounds, but I didn't; instead I went to the post office with my presents.

Also I had to carry something home which wouldn't've been convenient on a bike.

We had three lay-offs last week. So today when I saw UberBoss quietly walking up to my cube, slowly, eyes down, my breath caught. It resumed a moment later when I realized that everyone else in my department was also converging on me. After we all laughed at me for that confusion, pour mon anniversaire, they gave me a card and a wee potted rose.

Much better than being laid off.

a moveable feast

Much better than The Sun Also Rises. His writing life in Paris and elsewhere, not so much with the racist slurs, and a little kid called Mr. Bumby. Gertrude Stein, and how he fell out of love with her (hearing her plead with her nameless companion); Ezra Pound, and how disappointed he was that Pound had never read the Russians; Tolstoy (who appears only through his books), whom Hemingway loved even though he wrote so badly (according to Hemingway, who maybe didn't see more than one way to write well); Ford Madox Ford, "as he called himself then" and what a twit he was; skiing in Austria and having the legs for it because lifts didn't exist and you couldn't ski what you couldn't climb.