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 This morning
walking to the bus stop I heard a seagull. That cry, that plaintive, seafaring
cry that makes the tides of my blood run saltier. I almost wept.
Well. Anything after that is going to be anticlimactic,
so I'll make this as trite as I can.
I
just ejected a floppy from the G3 and put it on a pile of stuff on RDC's
desk that I'll remove to mine at the end of the night (his has the G3).
I am trying to write something about myself that is positive and confident
and assertive. I suck at this and I know it: there is nothing positive
I can assert about myself confidently. Therefore I am listening to the
Cure. Bright, aren't I? I'm listening to Staring at the Sea and
reminding myself to eject the CD before RDC accidentally plays it and
implodes or whatever would happen to him if he heard Robert Smith moaning
"Charlotte Sometimes." Then I realized there are only 17 tracks
on Staring at the Sea and the tape that I didn't make illegally
freshling year is a full 90 minutes. So I found the cassette I would have
if I sank to such piracy and decided I was glad I still didn't have it,
because it has songs the disc hasn't. Also I transferred files on a zip
earlier, so the stack comprises two compact discs (Staring at the Sea
and Disintegration), a floppy disk, a zip disk, but not a cassette.
Twenty years ago I'd've had no idea what any of them (including the cassette)
might be. Fifteen years ago I'd've known everything but the zip.
A
successful library jaunt. HAO
told me I couldn't read Waiting for the Barbarians without first
reading The Penal Colony, so I got that. Lolita and The
Annotated Lolita were supposed not checked out but they weren't on
the shelf, so I couldn't hold them. I wish there were an annotated Pale
Fire. There must be; I just have to find it. The first episode of
"Brideshead Revisited." 1981? I wondered how Jeremy Irons could
play an Oxford student. 1981 explains that. No Wicked, which I
discovered to be classified as sf anyway. That must be why PLT
read it, and why I shall have to open my mind to attempt it. No True
Story of the Three Little Pigs, but I did get Lily's Crossing (Newbery
Honor), Black and Blue Magic (Zilpha Keatley Snyder), The Indian
in the Cupboard (NEA's 100 Books for Children), and Walk
Two Moons (1995 Newbery Medalist). I started the last walking back
and read it on the bus and before I ran to aerobics and I love it. It's
got death and grandparents, like another Newbery Missing May, but
it doesn't suffer for that.
Run though I did to step, I neglected to pee before I left the house (about
an hour after the welcome-home pee) or before class started. I actually
had to pause to relieve myself because the impact jostled my bladder so.
I tried to pee aerobically though, I really did.
The HEBD look-alike whom I worshiped/felt superior
to had her usual just-the-platform step today and just kind of went along,
also as usual. Toward the end we used those big exercise balls (I want
one as a desk chair) and there weren't enough to go around and we shared
them round every few sets. I offered her mine and she said, "No thanks--I
can't do this exercise, I have a reconstructed hip."
I am such an unforgivable incorrigible so-and-so. Will I
ever learn not to pass judgment on people unless
I know their whole story?
Speaking
of being a superiority bitch, I did find and correct a typo in the paragraph
where I whined about the NEA's lack of copy-editing (and others in other
entries). Even Homer nods. 21 May 1999: It only took me five days to find
that typo, but it took me nearly two months to realize the link in the
above paragraph didn't work.
That's one of my favorite phrases. I picked it up from RJH,
who used it to describe either me and my perfectionism or the state of
the UConn library (which emulated the Leaning Tower of Pisa) or both.
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