Reading: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost

In the midst of: A.S. Byatt, Biographer's Tale; Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter

On deck: Suburban Nation; Invisible Man; Don Quijote

Moving: NT 42'30" 613 calories 4.74 miles

Watching: "Illuminata"

11 March 2002: Mind the gap

I tried to replace my six-year-old Gap khakis. I managed to stain them, on the front of the left thigh where I would notice it rather than on the cuff where I could ignore it, and the bottoms of the legs are beginning to fray. So off I strolled to the Gap. Which now sells only flat-fronted tan pants, which of course are not khakis since they lack pleats. Grr.

When I was about to leave Phoebe, over 15 years ago, one of the regulars, a Board Member, who eventually wrote For the Love of Books: A History of the Libraries of Old Lyme, Connecticut, gave me a farewell card with a twenty-dollar bill in it, for me to buy myself something I otherwise wouldn't, read the note. I bought myself a pair of khakis from Express (not quite what she had in mind) and wore them, loving them, for nine years, until the cloth on the butt was about to split, whereupon I hied myself to the Gap for a replacement.

I have no idea where to go next. Old Navy, maybe.

So I consoled myself at Ross, buying, what else, a lavender sun dress. I tried on a size 10 suit whose skirt I could barely zip around my ass and whose color, I thereupon sour-graped, was more orchid than lavender anyway. And another size 10 suit that fit great and was a perfect small houndstooth, but the jacket was notched deeply enough to show my bra, and what the hell am I supposed to wear under that, plus was long enough that the horizontal line at my hips didn't do me any favors, and the skirt was too long, and when do I ever hem anything or, more likely, have anything hemmed? But the lavender sun dress was just right.

I did 40 minutes on the Nordic Track when I got home.