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: nada

15 March 2002: New mail

There is nothing to be gained by rereading old email.

There is much to be gained by new email, though. 3SK just got back from building a house for Habitat for Humanity in New Zealand. That sounds a fantastic trip.

From his Christmas card, I wrote on my calendar that PSA and his wife were due in March. I remembered that when, earlier this week, I finally tore February off my calendar, and then I didn't write because I was struck with superstition. Or courtesy or caution, whatever. He emailed me at 4:00 Saturday morning (from Japan), waiting for this baby now a week overdue. I was maliciously amused when my urbane friend found a job in Bozeman; now I am delighted to learn his new post is in Seattle at the University of Washington.

It is supposed to snow this weekend. Both UConn teams are in the basketball tournament and have games this weekend that RDC will watch. My hatred of college sports on principle is bolstered (hypocritcally) by the fact that in practice I cannot watch them, getting all stressed. Because I don't care, you see.

I subscribed electronically to UConn's student paper, The Daily Campus. It's just as bad as ever. There is talk of building a "town center" on Storrs Road just off campus, across from E.O. Smith high school. Bwah ha ha. Apparently what students want most of all, leading the polls, is not bookstores or coffee shops or art galleries but fast food restaurants. I am so proud.

If I hadn't gone to UConn, I probably wouldn't know RDC or Nisou or SEM or PLT or HEBD or TJZD or MCB or RJH or LEB or Charenton or ABW or JCC or ALN. If I had gone to school in a city, I might have learned sooner than I did that I don't like living in a city, but I also therefore wouldn't've enjoyed my college years as much. I probably would have graduated with a helluva lot more debt. But if I had gone to a real school in a real college town, maybe the antics of my alma mater would please me more often. I might not have been weird enough for Hampshire or Oberlin or Reed, of course. And I wouldn't trade my friends for a better student paper, that's for damn sure.

Anyway, RDC can watch all the basketball he wants. I want to

• paint the screens
• spackle the sunroom
• scrub the upstairs landing
• prime "
• paint "
• make a lenght of shoe moulding for "
• clean the back landing floor including
• remove the splashes of paint
• see what I can do about the red paint the former owner saw fit to paint the floor edge with
• rebuild the kitchen window
• rebuild the sunroom windows
• plant this year's vegetable garden seedlings

I plan actually to do the first and last items. And the cleaning bits. I haven't exactly learned how to use the router this week.