Reading: Lucy Maud Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

Moving: rode to work

Watching: "The Chocolate War

Listening: Yaz, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush: "The Chocolate War" has a great soundtrack!

30 May 2001: No title because I wrote this two weeks ago

Randomly looking at old entries, I saw that in Santa Fe I justified my having dessert because I was the only one not having drinks (and I only had one dessert--such restraint--vs. everyone else having more than one drink). This is sensible only because it balances the bill; it is not sensible for my fitness level. And I wrote that that's why I'm "boys husky," which I thought was Leonard Neeble's size. I'm wrong. Boys Husky might have been whatsisname's size in One Fat Summer, but Leonard's is Boy's Portly.

Which makes me question my and Daniel M. Pinkerwater's apostrophes. A store would have a section labeled "Boys" for boys; the subsection for tubby kids might be Boys Portly. Pinkwater has an apostrophe, which makes me wonder, "A boy's portly what?" So I'm sticking with no apostrophe.

The reason I know this is that I finally bought myself Five Novels today. Alan Mendelsohn, Boy from Mars was one of my favorite books as a child, but somehow I never sought out Pinkwater's other books. Now I have four more, plus Alan, in one convenient volume. Wheeee! At least I hope it's convenient. It might be too thick.

Also I borrowed Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside from the 'brary yesterday (after my distasteful perusal of Rosamunde Pilcher). I'm not reading Radiant Way or Peppered Moth or At Swim-Two-Birds.

And I feel really guilty about that last. I was supposed to have read it for a class almost twelve years ago. Modern Irish Lit. I shone in that class--the only two classmates I met subsequently remembered me when I didn't remember either of them. The professor loved me. The Táin, Dubliners, Elizabeth Bowen, Crock of Gold, Seamus Haney, W.B. Yeats, Sean O'Casey, I ate them all up. I really thought I could do graduate level work on the author I chose for my independent project, Æ (George William Russell). But when we read At Swim-Two-Birds, I fell silent. Jacobus noticed this and inquired whether I had anything to say. See, that's the thing: when you've been reading and discussing enthusiastically all semester long, the one book you blow off makes you really conspicuous. Naturally this is the one book from that whole class on the Modern Library list. I started it this weekend--my same copy, used when I bought it and now seriously yellow and musty--and read about 40 pages.

Those two classmates I met subsequently I also dated, or tried to. Two years later, Tim had returned from a year abroad in Sweden and we started talking one fall day outside JHA (the humanities building). We went to see "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and he hated it; I sensed this but when I asked if he'd enjoyed it and he lied, I believed him. For a while. That petered out. Over semester break the other transacted some business with at the Registrar, where I worked, and he was so cute I called him up and asked him out, whereupon he said he remembered me from class. That went nowhere and is chronicled in more detail elsewhere.

Anyway. Reading Good Books. That's me. That's what I'm doing.

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I rode my bike to work. Over a distance of less than three miles, it takes almost no time at all. I'm never going to jog to work if I keep going by foot, so biking is a good way to get my heart going, if only for a few minutes. It's street riding, which annoys me; and I have to lock my bike--I have my front wheel in my cube today so I can carry only my U-lock to attach the frame and the rear wheel to the rack instead of U and cable; but overall, much less time than walking. Probably fewer calories, since biking is more efficient transportation than walking, too. But faster and more pulse-y. Except it means no more audio book.