hiding

Reading: Jerry Spinelli, Wringer

Moving:

Listening: Peter Gabriel

Watching: "That '70s Show"

28 February 2001: Various

• I have to read John Fowles in big chunks or not at all. I finished House of Mirth four days ago and since have read only 100 pages of The Magus, a 600-page novel. I am supposed to read Daughter of Fortune for Dot Org's book club next Wednesday and I think I will happily interrupt Fowles for Allende.
• Another rivetingly interesting lunch hour. I bought a watch battery and some sport socks.
• Also I read Wringer in Barnes & Noble. Skimmed it. I'll read more Spinelli, but I want at least one of his books to compel me into savoring it at less than a skimming speed.
• I am doing something I haven't done since high school. Or college. I think high school: returning to bed after my alarm. RDC and I are going to have to figure out a compromise about the location of the clock, because for most of the past several mornings I have returned to bed, to doze or even not to doze, pushing my wake-up time past the time I could walk to work, past any allowance for any crunches. I'm thinking I did this is high school because I remember being able to stay in bed until 11 on vacations in high school, barely asleep, reading or even just lying there. Ick. Is it a habit after two weeks? An easier one to get into than one of daily exercise I must say. And in contrast I was starking raving awake Saturday morning at 5:45. Grrr.
• I love my dining room. The chairs finally came on last Monday and Sunday I bought linens. If anyone wants to see it, ask me and I'll send you a link.
• Walking my favorite walk the other day I saw a peregrine falcon on one leg on a fencepost. I watched it, enraptured, for several minutes, until another walker startled it into flying away. So I got to see it in flight too.
• The other walker and I fell into conversation walking along. I liked him, talking about Denver, water issues, birds, and dogs, until he said he would be glad when his 16-year-old Lab would die. Not because she's in pain, because as far as he, his wife, and the vet can determine, she's not; but because an old dog is such an inconvenience. I didn't ask whether he'd ever had a child and changed its diaper.
• I left A Long Way from Chicago at work last week for someone's Valentine's Day bear to read. When I came in the next morning, my book was on CoolBoss's desk along with some highlighter-colored recycled-paper pictures. That Tex had had his children in the office the night before, was apparent; he told me his almost-three-year-old daughter had sat reading the book to herself for ages. Funny how she could pick it out as a a children's book when it has no illustrations. Except that Pooh was reading it, which might have made it obvious. And, he said, she liked the cover illustration. I'd've loved to hear what the stories she invented were. Oh no! Writing that reminded me that I should check the pages for fluorescent yellow markings before I return the volume to the library.