Thursday, 1 September 2005

bike and weights and swim

8.3 miles in three legs; swim 1,000 meters; squats, hamstrings, quads, upper body.

Friday, 2 September 2005

bike

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

the manticore

Not as good as Fifth Business but still wonderfully readable.

Saturday, 3 September 2005

heartsick

On Monday I knew only that Hurricane Katrina struck east of New Orleans. I was shopping for Increase and constructing storage for my book-indulgence and listening to a movie I know pretty much by heart rather than watching the news, until Wednesday. I knew Eliza was okay, and she was my only personal connection to the area.

Then on Wednesday I began to read and to watch and to imagine and to grieve.

Give your blood, give your money, give your words, give your participation, give your time, give your vote. Give your heart. Give.

Sunday, 4 September 2005

killer angels

Reading the Usual Suspects' "Serenity" thread later this week reminded me I finished listening to this book. There I read that Michael Shaara's Pulitzer-winning novel inspired Joss Whedon to write "Firefly," down to Jubal Early being a character's name. Heroism, romance, and mythology fuel the battle narrative, and also make this an excellent companion piece for the Deptford trilogy, in whose characters these themes seethe.

The narrator does a splendid job with Maine and Virginia accents. I wouldn't say I came away from the novel with a perfect understanding of the tactics and decisions of Gettysburg, but I do understand the personalities of the major players.

Also, I learned that the phrase "the bubble reputation," which is the title of a novel by Kathie Pelletier (an author of little prominence but whom I met at a booksigning), is from Shakespeare. If Pelletier gives the quote from "The Seven Ages of Man" in an epigram, I didn't notice. So when Longstreet contemplates it, I had a pleasant shiver.

Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds says, in the "Firefly" pilot, that they can't die because they are so very pretty. It hadn't occurred to me to link the two texts (can a complete television series be a text? I'll say yes), and now linking them is probably irreverently heretical, but that's Robert E. Lee, a mythologized, romantic hero to both sides, and the idea that valor can hold its own against any opponent.

swim

Swim 1,000 meters. I made the bad mistake of getting out at that point to have a banana. Even if I had collapsed at 2,000 without that banana, never mind 3,000, it would have been more than 1,000.

Tuesday, 6 September 2005

bike and walk

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

Then I walked Inga. She marks more than any female dog I have ever known, and eventually I wouldn't let her squat because look, dog, you're not even squeezing out a drop there. Also I have picked up dog poop. In a plastic bag that I used as a glove, but still. Next time I'm taking hand-sanitizer.

Also I walked to the post office, finally mailing some presents for Increase.

Wednesday, 7 September 2005

bike, swim, walk

8.3 miles in three legs; swim 1,000 meters; walk Inga.

I know a single kilometer at a time is nothing in distance, but it's long enough for me concentrate on my new technique, on kicking harder, and on breathing every other stroke. I'm down to every 1.8 strokes, say. I really must learn to do a proper flip-turn. Also I can do a pretty reliable 20-minute kilometer now, and have set myself a goal of a 30' 1500.

Thursday, 8 September 2005

bike and walk

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

Last night dusk was falling before I walked Inga, so we stayed on 16th and only walked to East High and back; yesterday I went immediately after work and so we walked around the lake in the park again. She is a very polite dog, gently accepting a treat from your fingers, sitting calmly to be leashed, sitting immediately after but one command, and not pulling on the lead.

That is, until yesterday, when she suddenly darted to one side and grabbed--some bark? what could she be so enthusiastic about in bark?--no, a fish someone must have pulled from the lake and later discarded. It wasn't very smelly, but it was old to have, I saw with distaste as she chomped, a maggot squirm from the slitted guts.

She does not know, or chose not to obey, "drop" or "leave it" or "out," though she sat immediately upon command. Dogs eat nasty crap, I know, but I prefer them to do it when their owners are home to let them out if they need to heave or loose their bowels and when I am not responsible for them. I squirted her in the face with my water bottle, and she looked at me reprovingly and held to her fish.

(Oh damn, for the first time I thought of Tony Markarios and his fish after he lost Ratter.)

I was reluctant to use force, because I didn't know if, with this delicacy of dead trout, she might snap. But I straddled her, gripping her shoulders with my knees, and gripped a jaw in each hand, pressing her lips against her teeth. That might not be the best way to get a dog to open her mouth, but it worked, and she didn't growl a bit. I praised her, but does a dog care about hearing "Good dog!" from people not her own? She lunged for the fish between her paws as soon as I released her head, and that was a near thing as I had not yet grabbed her leash again, but I won. She pulled as I hauled her away, but she forgot or at least stopped trying in less than thirty feet.

At least she doesn't try to lap up Canada goose shit. We couldn't go to the park at all if that were the case.

world of wonders

Better than The Manticore because I didn't dislike the narrator, and because Magnus Eisengrim's story is more important to the question of the Deptford trilogy--who killed Boy Staunton?--than David Staunton's. Also better because while Magnus was the main speaker, as I expected, Dunstan Ramsay set up the framing narrative, and I adored him.

I envy, as well as doubt, Davies's characters' ability to spin an unrehearsed yarn without backtracking because, having reached one point, he realizes he omitted a vital other point earlier.

Saturday, 10 September 2005

uh, a "run"

A few weeks ago, maybe before the Big Top, CoolBoss asked me about swimming, and after I gave my basic statistics, she said I should do the Danskin triathlon. So I said okay. It doesn't come across right in print. The clerk in Runners Roost (there's no apostrophe--is it a subject and predicate, or a misspelled possessive?) got the right tone when she asked me about my running habits. I said okay the way you'd agree to take in the neighbor's mail, as if it were nothing much, and perhaps with a hint of abashment. Is abashment a word? It should be. Oo, Merriam-Webster says yes. Good.

I bought sneakers, which I guess are called running shoes now? And shorts of some opaque but extremely lightweight material that does not chafe between my thighs, which, yes, touch. And socks of sturdier material than the nearly-mesh ones I bike and gym with. And an armband for my iPod.

Later than I planned today, at noon, but still without the heat I feared, I made my first attempt. I lunged past four buildings and walked the rest of the block to the park, and there I commenced to run, if it can be so called.

Yesterday at the store I ran on a treadmill and was filmed (happily only from the knees down) to check my stride. I do not pronate--my feet do not turn either out or in--which I knew from the wear on my regular shoes and I hope will not change with a faster stride.

Faster, but not longer. I have insufficient strength in my legs--in my quads?--to lift my legs into as long a stride at speed as I can at a pleasant walk. On a treadmill, I ran for maybe three minutes at 6 mph, which surprised me. On actual ground, for two miles rather than .3 of one, I was rather slower.

I had hoped I could run, however pitiful the stride, for a full mile--the park is a mile wide. I did not run one whole continuous mile, but I did mostly run, with walking interruptions, the whole distance, rather than a mile run and a mile walk. The interruptions were less than half a short block at the most and one was at the Thatcher Fountain for a quick drink.

Honestly I'm a tetch proud of myself. Sometime soon, tomorrow if I'm not hobbled, I'd like to use a treadmill to see how long I can keep up 6 mph in a controlled environment.

Jog 2 miles.

Later in the day I walked the dog, gingerly. Thursday I walked slowly because of cramps. Today I walked slowly because tired.

death in summer

Three deaths, actually, which is nothing you don't know from the back cover. I am tired after a 3-mile swim but it takes 45' on an elliptical or today's run to make me weary. I was glad to spend the afternoon on the couch reading with a sleepy buddy. A short book, thank you William Trevor, that at first reminded me of Dogs of Babel (widowerhood with a dog) but soon much more of Last Orders and House of Splendid Isolation--death, only the edges of a story told, a few different perspectives.

Sunday, 11 September 2005

bike and swim

I pedaled slooooowly to the gym and there swam a mile (1.6K).

Monday, 12 September 2005

bike and walk

Two 3.6-mile city rides. I brought my sneakers to work, but I used the excuse of a shirt that would barely zip up in the morning as a practical back-up to my still-hobbling self's desire not to run. Nor did I swim, because Inga needed her walk, especially since I didn't walk her yesterday; and I also had to finish baking cookies before bookgroup.

Which was fun. Tonight's host has three dogs, two Labs and a greyhound, and five cats. After the black lab had had her fill of petting, I was given a lapful of grey cat who not only splatted bonelessly against me but also loved my continuous petting. It put a paw around my arm as if hugging me, and after repositioning itself it wound up with a hind paw in my hand.

Tuesday, 13 September 2005

the towers of february

What a pleasure. I often read Stump the Bookseller, but not frequently enough to have submitted a solution to a stumper such as

I read this book when I was about 12 years old. I can't remember who wrote it or anything but it was about this girl whose mother and father were alchoholics or something, and she ran away from neighborhood bullies into a cemetery. She eventually stayed in the caretaker's house and there was this statue of Michaelangelo that was some kind of transmitter to another planet. It was one of the best books I read as a kid and I remember more about it, but my sister said that you guys can find any book.

or

I'm trying to find the title of a book I read in grade school (circa 1975-78). The plot involved a girl who goes to stay with some relative for the summer and meets a ghost named Felicia. I can't remember much else except there was a photograph in which Felicia, when alive, was not allowed to pose with her baseball bat, and at the end of the story when everything is resolved, the photo has changed so that she has her bat. Can someone please help?

or

The story involved two children, a brother and sister. They end up on hard times and have to travel to a relative's home or country estate. The relative is an old man, a lawyer maybe? Anyway,the story involves a family mystery or tragedy involving two other children from the past, one or both died in a fire. The modern children have to solve the mystery and prevent the tragedy from happening. I remember something about a "Wheel of Time" and something about the garden. The elderly relative is involved in some form as well. There's a passage in the book that said something about time being a wheel and all you had to do to travel from one time to another was to ride the wheel and know when to step off.

or

The book was about about boy living somewhere other than his home, maybe an English country estate. He makes friends with the shadows in the garden. I remember the shadows eating a cake. When you cut the cake and took a slice, the piece would fill back in because it was a shadow. And there was something in this garden they were frightened of, maybe a statue or a fountain. I remeber the story being very interesting and enchanting.

or

The protagonist, probably a 12-or-so-year-old girl, learns that her mother is not the woman she has grown up with, but another woman, whose name was Kat. Kat is an artist. One of the girl's strongest early memories from that time is being in some sort of cage (maybe in a park?) and poking a stick through the bars, messing up the wet paint on Kat's canvas. I think she called her "mommikat" at the time. The book has something of an Alice in Wonderland theme because the girl keeps dreaming about the Red Queen, which is partly what leads her to the discovery of her real mother. The girl's best friend is the daughter of a psychologist and gets into trouble at the end of the book for having been an amateur psychologist about the whole thing. This is all that I can dredge up. I must have read this book between 1975-1985.

or

I read this as a young girl and would love for my daughters to read it. I can't remember all the details, but a young girl, I believe an orphan, climbs a wall and enters the woods to find an old, broken down cottage. This becomes her sanctuary and she lovingly fixes it up. The story, I think centered around her lonliness and the joy that the cottage brought her.

...but of course I wanted to, because it was through Loganberry Books that I found Steps Out of Time and Another Heaven, Another Earth and The Elephant and the Bad Baby and The Loner and Toby Lived Here and others. Others had identified the above, and thank goodness, because I don't want anyone to be without obscurities like Beloved Benjamin is Waiting or The Ghost in the Swing or classics like The Ghosts and The Shades or favorites like Step on a Crack and Mandy. But to date, I haven't been the first to solve one, one that I am sure is so obscure that I might be one of three people in the English-speaking world who know both the book and the site.

This is the stumper:

I read this book in the school library between 1988-1989. It's a young adult fiction that centers around a boy who wakes up in an abandond apartment building by the sea. Next to him is a chest full of journals; the rest of the book is about those journals. In the journals, he discovers that he has traveled to another place, in which he met a girl and her father (and a dog?). He has amnesia of any time spent in the other place (so there, he has no memory of here). They spend time together, and he grows closer to the girl. In the end, he discovers the way home hidden in a pattern on the great oriental rug in the girl's living room. The ending is bittersweet, but this story has been bugging me for some time.

It is, of course, Tonke Dragt's The Towers of February. It was one of my absolute favorites when I was reading Madeleine L'Engle and The Cat in the Mirror and The Shadow Guests (two other books people have sought through Loganberry Books), books about time travel (as is The Ghosts). HPV and I were convinced that the story was real (the book had newspaper clippings! That proved it!) and that we could figure out the way to journey to this parallel universe as well. I asked the children's librarian to save it for me, because it barely circulated and I knew it would be discarded eventually. Indeed, aside from the rash of date-stamps in 1980 and 1981 when HPV and I read it to tatters, it was checked out maybe seven times in 20 years. I have it, that very copy, but I haven't read it in 900 years. Until last night, when I started it again.

And wow, the different message that I got this time. Parallel universes and the dog-girl Téja and the rug and Thomas Alva and the cockade flower and the no-electricity, sure; but much more the hostility of one world for another. It was like rereading My Side of the Mountain as an adult and only then noticing how everyone who isn't Sam thinks he's preparing himself for duck-and-cover days.

bike and jog

Two 3.6-mile city rides. Jog maybe a half-mile sandwiched in 2 miles of brisk, long-strided walking. Ow, and 25 stationary lunges. That's what hobbled me on Saturday, not the running.

I didn't swim. I was nearly falling asleep when I left work.

Saturday, 17 September 2005

game night

It might have been slightly unfair to have an uninitiated fourth at a game night with CLH and RCL and me. But you need a minimum of four people, and so this non-reading, non-gaming person was dragged in. In Cranium, she started awkwardly, attempting to do the "Seven-Year Itch" skirt thing and then forfeiting, but she laughed when I stood and bumped a hip and cooed "Happy birth-" and my sister guessed Marilyn Monroe; and she rallied enough to laugh at herself when some book thing turned up and she said "I don't read books. Magazines, maybe. I like the pictures."

I submitted "oenophilia" as a hobby during Scattergories, and Uninitiated Marilyn didn't see how that word begins with an O. But CLH had had to spell "subpoena" during Cranium and I offered Oedipus and economics as other sneaky "oe" Greek words. I offered "defenestration" as a fear beginning with D, and first no one believed it was a word, but did not two of the other three people in the room also learn about the Thirty Years War with Mr. Hage? Please. So RCL learned anew that ^ often indicates a dropped S, and at least CLH remembered learning that from Mrs. Degree.

That shared growing-up-ed-ness is why it would have been criminally unfair for CLH to be paired with either her sister or her friend of 35 years. She and Uninitiated Marilyn won Cranium and RCL won Scattergories. Me, I could do Marilyn Monroe but I couldn't do Porky Pig and when I started with "oink oink" all I could think of was Herbie luring the Bumble out of the cave in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and also I couldn't guess RCL's hummed rendition of "YMCA" and that's why we lost Cranium.

I love game night.

Sunday, 18 September 2005

philippa gregory

CLH said she'd borrowed non-Tudor Philippa Gregorys from the library but they didn't look as good as the Tudor ones. She began reading The Virgin's Lover, which I brought to her, and I leafed through Wideacre. Then, blarg, I read the whole thing, and then its sequel, Favored Child. If V.C. Andrews had written Wuthering Heights during George II, it might have been like this. I am going to read the third one, I know, and then I am going to slice my own head off so I don't have to know that I did so or remember anything about them.

jog

I have no idea how far I went. I "ran" about 40 minutes.

Sneakers, water sandals, and dressy sandals for a comped dinner at CLH's restaurant Friday made for three pairs of shoes on a six-day trip. If I hadn't run at least once, that would have made my excessive packing overpacking. Can't have that.

Monday, 19 September 2005

new house

My mother called me at 8:30 p.m. on the 14th, and I thought there must have been a tragedy, because since when is my mother awake at 10:30? And also I thought "Drat!" because I wanted to leave for the airport by 9:15 and was still attempting to nap a bit. Having answered the phone, I was obliged to talk to her until the bitter end, since I lie badly overall and worse without warning. I figured she wouldn't talk for a whole 30 minutes, not on her nickel, and I listened to her complain that I had sent her a broken picture of Haitch and Increase (the same picture my sister received without problem), which reminded me of other babies. I told her about the two new neighbor-babies and walking Inga and said that maybe my coworker would have her baby before I got back.

"Back from where?"

At this point I still could have dissembled, if I were a different person with any wit. But no. "Just make sure you come to CLH's on Sunday."

I had an exit row all to myself, which did not make up for the flight's being delayed 90 minutes but helped. It meant CLH could sleep that extra time, though, since I left her voicemail. She picked me up just before I got to the front of the line at the Logan Starbucks, which is not really a Starbucks and so had a sign reading "We apologize for the inconvenience but we cannot except the Starbucks card" [sic]. If I'd got to the front, I could have corrected it (I did so Tuesday night, buying a Brambleberry Tazo to make up for my rudeness).

I told her about my flub as soon as I was in the car. "Damn it, Jwaas, I shouldn't've even told you that you were coming." Yeah.

sfrI got to see the whole house, all over, and get to know it very well: it rained four out of the six days I was there, and the Sunday was the family cookout. RPR and husband and my adorable niece came too. I thought I would never admit any child to be more beautiful than ZBD, so I'll have to say they tie. And Emlet too. Three (or four, including Kitty of course) different beauties: how blessed I am to have as my own the three most beautiful children in the world.

two of my niecesTwo of my nieces. Someone recently asked, probably only for clarification, "You call your sister's cat your niece?" Well, yeah. As much as my nonblood friend's child is my niece, my blood sister's nonhuman child is my niece. I don't see a problem there.

Monday we went to the lake, and I lay half off a raft to whose foot CLH clung and butterfly-propelled us to the west end. Even she with her vision couldn't make out the boat launch, and that's a curiosity. Also some new forsworn house is going up on the other side of the hill, not visible from the lake but the missing trees make the ridgeline look like it's missing a tooth or several. Rant. I kicked us back--does this count as a half-mile swim?--to the beach, which is being Renovated in a Change Is Bad way. The pebbly beach is sliding downhill into the water--last summer there was a bit of a point and this year it's bigger. An admittedly handsome stone retaining wall is being built, but I wonder how long it will last: the rockpile is within inches of the surface this year and I wonder if that unmortared stone wall will become a rock jetty.

how I spent my summer vacationThen we sat and read, me this time with Iain Pears since here was no television to render me incapable of anything needing more attention than trash.

Wednesday, 21 September 2005

adventure of english

"Tip" is not an acronym! Apologies to E.L. Konigsberg, who made that mistake, and with "posh" too, in A View from Saturday. No apologies to Melvyn Bragg, because he is the one writing a history of English.

I had my hands full of a package for Increase and did not rewind at the time I heard the following, and afterward I said whatever the fuck and continued not to rewind and relisten, this being the problem with audio books, but I think Bragg alleges that Richard II put down the Peasant Revolt in 1381. If he had been that talented as a prince, he probably wouldn't've been deposed as a king. Edward the Black Prince squashed Wat Tyler. Sheesh.

The tip myth came up during cookie-making, with iBook open to the proper recipe, easy enough to jot a complaint. I should have noted all its weaknesses, but then I couldn't justify how otherwise I enjoyed the book.

A nonfiction audio book is wonderful to listen to at an airport gate. I sat in a chair with my legs up on my wheelie, head back in my horseshoe neck pillow, noise-blocking headphones in my ears, and if I missed a bit about Australian English or backtracked to repeat the chapter on Caribbean English, well, that's okay. The consistent, if not monotone, voice made for a better lullaby than my crooning playlist.

bike

Two 3.6-mile city rides.

Thursday, 22 September 2005

bike and swim

8.3 miles in three legs and 1600K crawl.

moulting buddy

Blake's jowls are raggedy and slightly matted because he is so sensitive in his moult that we don't want to cause him any more discomfort. I tried to rub a chunk out of his beard but a feather came too, a blood feather. He squawked in pain and scurried away from me, to his daddy to be rescued from mean mommy. Now he's forgiven me and is tucked on my shoulder, on one foot, provocatively having shoved his curved neck under my nose. But I can't tickle him with my nose because he's all porcupiney.

CLH's Kitty is a nice cat, for a cat. She has an aloof act but, Blake-like, she wants to be in the same room with you. And for a tortoiseshell with a bad dye job, I wonder how far back in her lineage the Siamese is. She has the loudest mah-rrowr I have ever heard, even including dear departed red-point Kato Beast.

She doesn't have any particular smell, either. Not doggy like a dog, rank or puppyish. Mostly she smells like my sister's house. Not like Blake, who smells like the best sort of dusty popcorn.

Have I mentioned how sweet my baby bird is?

Friday, 23 September 2005

bike and run

Two 3.6-mile city rides and a jog.

My regular course will be the perimeter of City Park, which is three miles. In time I'll add more distance in the park, because if I'm to run 3.1 miles in a race I should be able to run more than that comfortably, right? Like maybe 5 miles? I dunno.

I don't know how this is possible but the north side slopes up to the east without opposite declines anywhere else that I've noticed. It's an Escher park. So I will run clockwise around the park and up that hill. "Run" being an exaggeration, of course. I jogged along the south side to the Esplanade, walked to the west side, ran up the west side, turned right and stopped. I also scurried across to City Park Golf Course to slurp from a tee's water cooler. I acknowledge it as trespass but is that really bad of me? I don't know how people run distances or in heat: yesterday was 70 but I was parched in less than 2 miles. I walked eastward up the slope and didn't pick up my pace until the easternmost entrance to the zoo, the one it shares with DMNS, then I ran back to my starting point, and walked home to cool down. It was 5:09 when I last looked at the clock but didn't start immediately, so it took me slightly less than 44 minutes to go three miles.

Saturday, 24 September 2005

instance of the fingerpost

Um, wow. The Name of the Rose, certainly, for historical mystery, and more, John Fowles's A Maggot, for the period and the gradual uncovering of what might have happened.

Also, all books are one book: in The Adventure of English, Melvyn Bragg mentioned a (the one?) linguistic legacy of Oliver Cromwell, the phrase "warts and all" (for how he wanted his portrait painted). Iain Pears managed to mention it in his book.

Sunday, 25 September 2005

weekend

aspenWhat a nice weekend.

aspenFriday Kal and her squeeze came over for dinner. (I think he will just have initials--I don't know his middle name but he goes by an also-name more than by his given name--NZZ. Or perhaps I could call him Split, for Split Enz, or Neil? Neil works, since it shares its initial with his actual first name.) We had a marinated sirloin and roasted potatoes and heirloom tomatoes with mozzarella and chocolate mousse. And conversation, and a walk to the park, and I didn't quite fall asleep at any of these times.

Saturday we lay about all day reading, and Sunday we went to Golden Gate Canyon State Park and hiked through turning aspen.

Monday, 26 September 2005

bike and swim

8.3 miles in three legs. One mile swim, including two non-continuous lengths of butterfly. The in-between length was of Matron Sidestroke, but it was just the one length dividing two of a stroke of which one once was enough to make my heart nearly burst.

Tuesday, 27 September 2005

bike and run

Two 3.6-mile city rides. Jogged and walked just about (according to what I can calculate with Google maps) three miles.

Encouragingly, when I went outside I only thought it was on the warm side of nice and thought it was my flailings as a non-runner that drained me. But it's 86, I discovered when I returned. (It's 27 September and 86 degrees out!) This encourages me (as a "runner," if not as a terrestial) because I had assumed myself incapable of exertion in temperatures over say, 80 or 82. That's been the sticking point in this whole triathlon scheme, in fact: I'm supposed to run on purpose--without a good reason like being chased by a leopard--in mid-July? But this makes me hope that maybe I can acclimate. Heaven knows I felt a lot more oppressed at sea level last Sunday at a humid 73.

Another nail in the homesickness coffin.

neil gaiman, except not

Tuesday night I was awake until five whole minutes after 10.

At noon I jogged, and I ate my lunch at my desk around 2. At 5:30 (5:37, because I did not run fast enough for the bus), I met Trish downtown. I had had to stop for caffeine before I caught a bus, and when I came out of the Starbucks I walked downtown-ward instead of backward to the nearest stop, four blocks away instead of a half a one. But seven minutes might be less late than I have previously been with Trish. So we walked, passing at least two other Starbucks, from one of which I obtained another tea and a maple-oat nut scone, my old favorite, to the Tattered Cover. Once we found the end of the line for the line [sic], there we stood and gossiped, and my weaning myself from the board showed here because I did not bring up TUS first. Well, I did earlier when she showed me her bright red bag with blue dancing elephants on it! and I asked if it was from the place TUS had mentioned (no). Our arrival in the line garnered us spots in the 220s for the Signature of Neil Gaiman, for it was he we had come to see.

The hall holds about 250 people before fire regulations are severely strained, so we sat at the back. Immediately in front of me was a woman with a ~1.5-year-old child, whom she would stand on her lap, from which it could yelp gleefully or screech frustratedly, and whom neither she nor her three companions removed from the room for the length of the 40' reading. My consolation was to roll my eyes at Trish, and this was actually quite consoling. We talked smack about real live people in the room instead of about our invisible internet companions. I'm not sure if that's progress.

Gaiman read from Anansi Boys, which I keep thinking is Anasazi Boys, and it sounded a little Douglas Adams-y. Which is good, because when I heard Douglas Adams read (from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency or Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, I forget which--aha, the first lines of each, as Amazon provides them, suggests the latter), he was funny (as you'd expect); which is bad, as well, because sounds derivative. Or not: maybe I'm conflating two authors with a rabid and strange cult following whom I heard speak Britishly and in an over-crowded room, and because Gaiman wrote an introduction to an omnibus volume of Hitchhiker's, and because he spoke of going to Iceland and how mean the Norse gods are while the scene Adams read was of the woman inconvenienced at Heathrow by a Norse god-human trying to fly without identification. Self-conscious, deliberate humor, that is.

Tangent: when was that Adams reading, anyway? Was I going out with KFC, because I remember my favorite of his acquaintances, whose name I forget but not his morbid obesity, being one to ask a question? ("Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?" A pause, then, "Don't.") It's unlikely mostly because I dated him for what, a month or six weeks during freshling year. It must have been sophomore year, when I still saw some of those Buckley 5N men since NCS lived there too. Besides Adams's response to Whatsisname, I remember his explaining about towels (he kept losing his while on holiday with friends in Greece); and understanding his frustration (or feeling superior, whatever) when a stupid question showed how closely the asker hadn't read the book; and how pleased I was to learn that my favorite line from the book (approximately, "You don't get the same quality of passersby anymore, do you?") was also his; and later, a campus landmark of a geek pointing to his feet and asking if those socks were in the superintelligent shade of the color blue). Oh, and that's right: a UConn engineering professor always set as a project how to design the Nutri-Matic. Which further reminds me of another question--when asked how to make a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster, Adams said that terrestial conditions were impossible but the best approximation was to pour one liquor store into another.

Yeah. So in 17 years will I remember Neil Gaiman as well as I now remember Adams? Probably not. I liked and had read all easily accessible Adams at the time while as of now I have read only the first volume of Sandman and Coraline. Besides the rude parent of the screaming baby and the amusing and probably not as Adams-y as I think bit that he read from Anansi Boys, he said two things I remember as actually funny (which is a small fraction of the things that drew laughter from the slavering crowd): caricaturing a Hollywood executive and imitating Terry Pratchett using their pre-arranged, escape-from this-hellishly-insane-meeting word (which had to do with planes, so Pratchett gestured plane-fully); and saying that, upon his early July, early morning arrival in Reykjavik after leaving Minneapolis in the the evening and not having slept, he decided just to stay up until it got dark. I liked that bit because it was self-deprecating, and also it was interesting since during this sleepless sojourn, the seed of American Gods came to him.

Trish mercifully decided not to wait for the 227 people ahead of her to get her book signed. I was desperate for a pee and for something large and recently dead to eat. This we found at Appaloosa Grill. We started with crab-risotto cakes (me) and chicken satay (her) and both ordered the sirloin sandwich: marinated in lime and chili and with a garlicky mayonnaise. Jared joined us and had crawfish etouffee. At 9:45, after my appetizer, I still was ravenously hungry and wide-eyed awake. Then I ate my sandwich, trying unsuccessfully not to wolf it, and in a pause in conversation looked longingly at the bench seat of the booth and asked the time. 10:05.

I'm the funnest person I know, obviously.

Wednesday, 28 September 2005

tidbits


  • Trish calls people Smacky. That's better than Citizen or Comrade or Brother and no one could possibly object to it as they do to Ma'am, Miss, and Sir. Smacky. It's both derogatory and affectionate. It's Trish's and I cannot steal it, but I haven't wanted to appropriate anything as much since RudeBoy's "damb."

  • I dreamed a Russian Rabbithound (the "breed" of dog 3SK's Igor was) showed up at my house. His tags told me his name was Uro (?) but despite tags he had no owners. Igor had markings like a German Shepard, but long-haired and droopy-eared, whose paws were attached at the knee, while Uro had the same chassis but even shorter legs and short-hair erect fox-ears. He had an odd little waddle and an odder squat. But he was sweet and gentle with Blake and adopted himself at me, even though one of my dog-rules is that Ears Should be Droopy and Large. He wouldn't be happy in my house even if he did arrive: too many stairs.

  • Whyever the fuck, I had "Last Dance" in my head, specifically the line "A woman now standing where once there was only a girl." Perhaps because I move in such tedious circles that until Gaiman's reading last night I hadn't seen that many goths drooping about together since the 1989 Disintegration tour. That and Staring at the Sea are the only Cure albums I own, not that the latter counts as an album. I heard that one of their albums of the last few years (I would have assumed they'd've broken up long ago) approaches Disintegration. Hmm.

  • I am taking advantage of departmental absences to use two whole headphones. Disintegration and now Leonard Cohen.

  • Despite my musical choices I'm perfectly fine. Craving for breakfast for lunch replaced last night's ravenous desire, but when Minne and Lou and I got to the restaurant (the sort that has breakfast all day), I got a bacon guacamole burger instead of blueberry pancakes. I primarily wanted the bacon, so that was okay, but bacon and guacamole and two servings of red meat in less than 24 hours? Yum. I got through the afternoon without raiding anyone's chocolate, though I skipped the gym.

  • My sister had never heard of "eleventy-first," poor little non-Tolkien-reader. She liked it enough to use it but couldn't remember it well enough to say anything but "eleventy-tenth."

crippled by nostalgia

Maybe I don't want to be, anymore.

When I happened to be going home for Nisou's wedding in 1996, I looked up someone from my class whom I knew lived in town and asked whether the class of 1986 was going to have a reunion. She said, "Good idea," and took it from there. I created a page listing our names and some things I thought anyone from Lyme or Old Lyme might google if noodling about for their school.

Now we're drawing near a 20th and my contribution to the reunion is the page and googling contact information. I found one fellow's fundraising page for a marathon he's running. What makes me sad is how many of his sponsors are our classmates--people he is still close enough to, 20 years on, to ask to donate, while in contrast, I am friendly with 1.5 persons. One graduated with me after being new in 10th grade and another I grew up alongside from nursery school onward until she went to private school and we had had, as Egg said, a fight over a lunchbox anyway.

Eh, Smacky (is that better than O My Friends and Brothers, O My Future Biographers?), I'm not the worst off. We had four people who were new in 12th grade, and at least one moved away the summer before. Spending your 12th year among strangers must suck, as must growing up among the same core group of 60 or so people yet being able to call none of them friends, which I know also happened. If I didn't walk away with lifelong buddies, at least I left with a few shared smiles.

I'm so healthy I shock myself. And mostly don't wonder if I'm being disloyal to my high school self for being so. A little regret in a reminiscent kind of way, but not a paralytic crippling. Wheee.