Two 3.8-mile city rides.
That I survived was no thanks to one particular driver. I am used to the city buses taking no notice of red lights. They go through lights so red they're brown--with the perpendicular direction's green. So this morning when I got the green to go east, I waited for the southbound bus to blow the light before proceeding. Then a northbound car also blew the light to turn left and westward. I figured--stupidly, maybe--that that was the last of the lightblowers, so I was well into the intersection when another northbound car blew the light to turn left and westward--despite me going east and westbound drivers going straight who could evade it and westbound drivers turning south, who could not.
At the other hairy intersection, another car waited to turn left but not did blow the light to do so. It even backed up, out of the intersection and behind crosswalk, when it realized it couldn't make its turn.
Both were single-occupancy vehicles wanting to turn left at an expired green. In ascending order of stereotyped stupid driving, the one that went for it had a male driver, was a minivan, and the driver held a cell phone to his ear. The other, who anticipated but cleared the intersection, was a woman driving a Saab without a handheld cell phone. Also, the minivan certainly had an automatic transmission while the Saab could possibly have been standard.
I was going to channel Yosemite Sam and say "Grrr, I hate rabbits," but I am still under the beech hangar on Watership Down so I won't.
Months ago we bought tickets to see David Grisman at the Botanic Gardens. Yesterday the Junkies finally posted more tour dates. There is one show in Colorado. Both Grisman and my Cowboy Junkies are on Friday August 27th.
RDC, prince that he is, said we could probably sell the Grisman tickets--Grisman is more him and Junkies more me, though he like them too--but we bought the Grisman tickets first and we've never seen him but we've seen the Junkies a slew of times, me eight and him six. He was sweet to offer.
But still, fuckity.
It certainly was not free of certain stereotypical Oprahisms, but it was fine fluff. The three sisters were Chekov (I don't remember that story at all, but the title works); were Mrs. Which, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Whatsit; were any three sisters--weird, fatal, gorgon, harpy--from myth and legend and no worse for that. It reminded me of Sue Hubbell's A Country Year (also about bee-keeping), Carson McCullers, and even E.L. Konigsburg because of a French Provincial bedroom set (just like in The Outcasts of Schuyler Place.
Now comes the decision: which of the real books should I start?
Now comes the decision: which of the real books should I start?
From the library I have José Saramago's History of the Siege of Lisbon. Otherwise, on the top shelf of the living room bookcase, reserved for stuff high in the queue, are Isabel Allende's Infinite Plan (I've had that for years), Sherman Alexie's Toughest Indian in the World, Don Quijote, Tracey Chevalier's The Virgin Blue (I started it and it seems like she doesn't do the annoying swap-the-narrator thing, so it might be okay), Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, Moll Flanders, David James Duncan's The Brothers K, Zora Neale Hurston short stories, Nicholas Mosley's Hopeful Monsters (about which I knew nothing when I bought it for RDC except its great title), an annotated Lolita, Charles Palliser's Quincunx that SPM said is one of the best books ever, Iain Pears's An Instance of the Fingerpost, Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, and Geoff Ryman's Was. Also War and Peace, for reference.
The harder or longer of those have sat there since we bought the bookcase over a year ago. I need a good thick book to sink my teeth into, like Palliser or Pears. But I've also got to get started on Absalom, Absalom!, though I should reread The Sound and the Fury first. Maybe I'll take Faulkner as my Project reading and punctuate it with Hurston, though if Ulysses is any pattern I did a lot of lite reading just to avoid him, 'cause I'm such a brainiac.