Reading: Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles and The God of Small Things

Viewing: Douglas Coupland

Moving: 30' on the elliptical trainer, level 13, with 2 2-lb. handweights, average heart rate 158; plus a full weight circuit.

Learning: the inspiration for Coupland's new novel Miss Wyoming, and that I lost my prescription sunglasses

 

 

 

24 January 2000: Douglas Coupland

I should write about Roadside America more often. The mention caught HAO's eye (because I messed up) and PLT's (because I mentioned him).

Without permission, here's PLT's email:

There was a block party in September, and I got to talking with this guy about weird places to see in the area. I mentioned the Presidio Pet Cemetery. The Pet Cemetery has lots of dogs named Sarge. He knew it. Anyhow, then our other shared weird local favorite is the Wave Organ (sign altered to include "my" between the two words). After we swapped several more weird-place tips, I realized that this guy Knew Too Much. I may have frightened him when I quoted the description of Holyland USA (Waterbury, CT) [I am appalled that this place exists in our native state, except that everyone who lives in Connecticut knows that Waterbury is the armpit of Connecticut--Ed.] from memory ("a post-nuclear Road Warrior vision of the Holy Land") And that's how I found out that one of the authors of Roadside America lives on my block.

"A post-nuclear Road Warrior vision of the Holy Land" must be how Roadside America, not the proprietors of the defunct Holy Land USA, describes the attraction.--Ed.

---

So. RDC called me at 9:30 a.m. to say that his flight was not this evening as he thought but at noon and did I think HAO would drive me to DIA to fetch the car since he would have to himself thither? I thought probably.

It wasn't until I was in the elevator on my way home and reached into my knapsack for them that I realized I didn't have my prescription sunglasses, the spectacles that make life in glasses bearable. Well, they were probably at home. They weren't at home. Well, they were probably in the car. I'll abandon strict chronology and Coupland to say that my sunglasses were not in the car, not in either our of knapsacks, and the last time I saw them was 5:00 yesterday driving home from the park, when I left them on the backseat next to but not in my knapsack. In my new beloved I-have-staid-artistic-taste Monet eyeglasses case. Spank me. I must have dropped them between the parking lot and the door (I was holding in my hands all the various garments we'd removed and tossed into the backseat instead of into our knapsacks, and poles and spare boots and snowshoes) and I can't believe I didn't hear them fall.

Well, the ophthalmologist told me I could wear contacts again. But now I'll need not just new regular glasses (my frames are decaying, particularly after sweating hard in them for the past week) but new sunglasses as well. We can afford it, for which I am grateful, but I hate my own stupidity. The only chance is that someone turned them in to the leasing office, case and all, and that they're not damaged. Piss tits corruption lies.

----

Saturday after we grocery shopped and had lunch at Alfalfa's, I popped across to Office Depot and officially gave up hope that they will ever again in my life, or at least in 2000, have individual dated pages. I exchanged the 1999 two-days-at-a-glance pack they sold me in late December 1999 for 2000 week-at-a-glance pages. They didn't want to give me even in-store credit because it had been over a month, but I stood up on my hind legs and insisted. So I'm back to composing entries based partly on notes compiled during the day. I just have to make more notes. And proofread. So. Today:

  • Also on Saturday I was rootling through my hard drive (called Fiver, from Watership Down) and found a few images of Old Lyme. I was going to do a (limited) photo essay on my home town before Beth mentioned that she liked them. And I just typed "EBC" instead of Beth-with-her-link, because that's what I've reduced her to.
  • The latest issue of Dot Org's magazine looks like Ken Kesey's Sailor Song.
  • It's 11:30 and I want to sleep more than I want to discuss the School Library Journal's list of 100 most influential children's books.

---

But before I throw in the keyboard for the night, may I say that Douglas Coupland

  • has aged quite a bit in the past two years, and looked better before, with a beard
  • indulges in a lot more Canada-abuse than I thought Canadians permitted
  • still signs his name with a circled x, although this time he didn't whine about how he is sick of being associated with the term Generation X
  • claimed all the Canadian flags he asked the audience to draw will be posted in the next few days
  • said that Miss Wyoming was a pleasure to write (and answered, when someone asked what was the worst, Life After God) but did not say "JonBenet Ramsey haunts my dreams." (I'm inventing that.)

I knew that before Canada carved out a chunk of territory for Inuits, the number of points on the maple leaf used to correlate to the number of provinces and territories, but I couldn't remember how. All I could remember was how Emily in Look Through My Window couldn't get an even star until Kate suggested she make one with six instead of five points, so I made a stem with three big points each flanked with two littler points and then added another two sets of three (I shouldn't've; my first instinct was right but failed to tell me about the little spurs to either side of the stem). My New York Public Library Desk Reference doesn't have flags of the world, which is ridiculous, and tonight I can't stay on line long enough to get my email, let alone find a flag of a country we should have take over long ago (which I say only because when Coupland asked us to draw the Canadian flag, he said "No fair to draw the U.S. flag and write 'we own you' on it"). I bring this up only because HAO had a great idea: she sketched a red bar down each side but in the middle instead of drawing a leaf, she wrote, "Feuille rouge ici." It wasn't until much later during the reading that, remembering the syrup JUMB recently gave RDC and me, I scrawled a one-word note to her: "erable."

(Coupland had everyone draw a Canadian flag because audiences in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa could not.)

Go to previous or next, the Journal Index, Words, or the Lisa Index

Last modified 24 January 2000

Speak your mind: lisa[at]penguindust[dot]com

Copyright © 2000 LJH