Jesus, I thought my eyebrows had grown in more than that. I haven't plucked them since the turn of the year or maybe Christmas. The professional waxing was okay but on my own I believe I went a little extreme.

Reading: Not Lord Jim and not Horse Heaven. I figure I'll start Age of Innocence later

Moving: does yesterday count? 3.75 miles in 35 miles

Listening: Roxy Music Avalon

Watching: not "Jane Eyre" on Encore. 'Cause, see, I have a life

17 January 2001: Suffused

In time for my ten-year high school reunion, I made a page for my class, with not only everyone's name from the yearbook but everyone I could remember who didn't finish with us: Brian who went to Deerfield and Kaitlynn who went to Williams and Jackie who went to the Catholic school whose name I've forgotten and HPV who went to Hammonassett. I had high hopes for the page at first, that I could get a paragraph from everyone at the reunion. Kind of to update the yearbook, in which we'd had a lot of space, a third of a page apiece. I didn't hound people like a roving reporter--both the hounding and the roving wouldn't've helped my new (ten years later) image as No Longer a Dog.

Over the years I 've had a few people get in touch with me because of that page, which makes me happy. Lyme-Old Lyme has an alumni page and it's listed there. A few weeks ago I emailed MWC at his company, an address I'm sure is valid, but have heard nothing back. I can appreciate that--the whole Leaving Baggage Behind theory. (Of course the same day, I wrote to PSA and only heard back from him today. I shouldn't be baggage, because as we weren't friends I left no luggage, but in the same vein, because we weren't friends, there's hardly basis or reason to become friends now, fifteen years later and both deliberately thousands of miles from our hometown. Anyway, him more than any other I wish I could have befriended.

This is where I remind myself that if I had had friends in high school I wouldn't be the person I am today. It was hard then, but it's been worth it.

The reason hearing from my classmates makes me happy, besides learning that they're still alive and kicking, is that KAGA was right: no one hated us nearly as much as we remember. And when people did hurt our feelings, they were all so caught up in their own angst that they probably didn't even notice, much less do it deliberately.

Except M---. He laughed when he realized he'd made me cry. Pig.

Anyway, not to dwell on all that backstory, except it sets up what happened today.

Randomly checking my mail at work, I got email from Chip. I don't know why I remember him as clearly and fondly as I do, except that our class was so small we practically breathed for each other, but anyway I do. I was disappointed not to see him at the reunion, as I'd heard he lived locally, but anyway of all my classmates he's one I've been curious about over the years.

His return address was his given name, but I impulsively called him Chip, his childhood nickname. Then I apologized and called him by his real name. Here it serves as his pseudonym, so I can get away with what I couldn't do in person.

I don't know why hearing from him made me so happy. We were in school together from kindergarten or maybe even nursery school through 12th grade. We had the occasional class together, although he was more Business and I more Academic. We both lived near enough to Boston Post that, on a summer Sunday evening, we would go out to laugh at all the summer folks trying to use it (it's also Route 1) as a shortcut to the Baldwin Bridge, where I-95 crosses the Connecticut--but the traffic would be backed up for ten miles or more. Once we sold directions together. We were never palsy though, and after graduation day didn't give each other a backward glance.

So that made my afternoon.

---

What else. Lord Jim didn't exactly seize me by the throat and clamor to be read. I began Horse Heaven, but Jane Smiley or not, horse-racing doesn't thrill me.

Another aside: the phrase "seize me by the throat" is a favorite because of "Fiddler on the Roof." My mother brought my sister and me to see it at the Saybrook high school when I was in elementary school. When the father describes to the mother the nightmare he says he's dreamed, that if their daughter marries the widower then the ghost of the dead wife will seize her by the throat and kill her, I nearly sank into the floor with fright. The ghost was played by a pair of kids, one on the other's shoulders, but did I see that? No I did not. I saw a 10-foot ghost in spooky blue-grey rags onstage. We had the soundtrack to the Zero Mostel production and I always loved it except for that track. I was permanently scarred. But that play is--hey, it's another musical I like--part of my family's vocabulary. My mother calls me on Thanksgiving Eve to make sure I'm making apple pies and intones "TradiSHUNNNN! Tradition!" at me. Whenever my sister tells me about a new man, I sing "Matchmaker." It's a sickness.

I'm still trying to avoid The Bar Sinister and I want to make more of a dent on the Modern Library list before I read The Sparrow so I guess I'll start Age of Innocence tonight. Walking home from the bus, grinning at the sky about hearing from Chip and being friends with PLT again and looking forward to pictures of Nisou's house and dining with RDC, SPM & JJM at the Cherry Tomato tonight, I got all tangenty in that lisa-way I like. I was thinking of what I could read and how unthrilled I was by my current candidates but how I had to read something and a sentence popped into my head: "'All right, all right, I'll take it,' Lydia said hastily. 'We've got to have something.'"

That's Lydia Argounova from We the Living, a book I remember unnecessarily well. It occurred to me that all sisters named Lydia must be Bad Eggs: her and Lydia Bennet. Then I realized that two sisters do not make a theory, especially since the former is ten years older and the latter four years younger than the protagonist, and Lydia A. would never have nonmarital sex whereas Lydia B.--well, we all know what happened to her. The hussy.

Lydia O Lydia, Lydia the tattooed lady... you can learn a lot from Lydia!

Which is a tack The Bar Sinister uses: Lydia tries to instruct Jane and Elizabeth about what will happen on their wedding nights. I can't believe I'm going to read that thing.

---

I like to think I don't have Ayn Rand that much on the brain but that today she invaded. Today I found Random House's official list of the Modern Library Top 100 ya ya ya thing. What I had not seen before was the readers' list. I am appalled: four Ayn Rands (that's also all her fiction) and L. Ron Hubbard in the top 10?

Being who I am, I combined the four lists. Of the 292 discrete titles, I have read 88. Of the 204 remaining, I plan to read very few of those books that appear on only the MLA reader list. Who is this Charles de Lint person and why should I care? Isn't that E.R. Eddison fellow called "Doc" and someone TEWS, no one I emulate, liked a lot? Do people really consider Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard to be the best, most important, most literary, most worthwhile authors in English of the 20th century? Angels and ministers of grace defend us if that's the case. It didn't escape my notice that the two Cormac McCarthys are the two with the most elements of the horror genre, either.

I expect the only reason this list doesn't include Louis Lamour and McCarthy's Border Trilogy is that sf and horror readers use the web a lot more than do readers of westerns.