Saturday

Aug 18, 2001

bookstores

Finally, a dog walk. A rushed one through the neighborhood, down by the park, before the heat arrives in waves. Still, at the end, we are searching for shade, choosing shade over escaping barking dog block. We see a house for sale for 'best offer' and several that are still priced too hopefully. Squirrels excites Zoey a few times. She almost rips SuRu's arm off once.

Quick shower. SuRu picks me up for breakfast with our buddies LG and Pam. FFP is waiting for a guy from Ironwood (custom furniture guy) to match the stain for a new CD rack. Then he will go watch a UT football scrimmage.

We have a pleasant breakfast. Talking of travel and disorders, publishing books (the choce between online publishing and vanity publishing, we aren't foolish enough to think that traditional publishing is in our future).

SuRu wants a bottle of bubbly for a friend's present. We go to GrapeVine Market. I help her choose one and we look all around. She buys me a gift (that birthday never ends!) of a bottle of Faux Frog Apropos Syrah. Great label, promising wine. Ten bucks. See I'm not a snob.

Home again, I work a bit on this and that and then FFP suggests a trip to Half Price Books.

I find a few interesting things to look at but nothing to buy. The people are interesting in this University drag store: a guy with blue hair and facial piercing sweeping his girlfriend over backwards to give her a kiss; a small boy, maybe six, sitting on a stool carefully pouring over a book about early people with maps and pictures of cavemen; a father, lounging against a bookcase looking at something repeatedly answering his son's entreaty to buy software games with 'Is it Christian?"

During our tour of Half Price, I mention that there is a new biography of John Kennedy Toole called Ignatius Rising. I saw it at the arboretum Barnes and Noble. We decide to go to the one down the street. We get a great parking place in the shade (so very important these days) and decide to go into the Co-op which has a back entrance. It's time for the fall rush of students buying books and supplies and, just for the nostalgia factor, we go downstairs and walk around among the piles of Calculus books and check out titles. A lot is the same about the textbook business since I spent my college years struggling with piles of secondhand books for minimum wage. There are some titles we would have never seen, though. And a pickup window for WEB orders. I look on the WEB later and, sure enough, you can get your books on the WEB at my old school, too. Now called University of North Texas.

Forrest finds that Barnes and Noble is out of the book but we still wander around and he buys some marketing and writing books and has an iced coffee and I look at some Fireworks books and get sucked into buying one that is 20% off and wherein I find a couple of interesting topics.

While I'm sitting in an easy chair, FFP comes up and says, "You have a closeup mode on that digital camera of yours, don't you?" Turns out he has vaguely promised a radio station that he will get a picture of a ring his jewelry store client is giving away in a promotion.

We go home and he calls and somehow I'm talked into a trip to the mall in the heat.

This isn't as bad as it sounds. We don't park too far from the entrance that the store is close to and we get some pictures although photographing a ring is a challenge. We stop by BookStop on the way home since FFP has called and they have the book about John Kennedy Toole. I look at magazines and a few books I'm interested in but don't buy. (Larry McMurtry's memoir called Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. Worth buying for the title. Out in paper. But I don't. After all, I've thousands of unread books at home. Plus, I'm going to be in Portland before long, and that means, of course, Powell's City of Books.

While in the mall at the jewelry store, we noticed a Sam Goody's store nearby. We had decided to stay home for dinner so we think we will buy a DVD with the money we saved. They have Chocolat and it's on sale so that is that.

I spend some time trying to get the ring picture to work. I even try animating it to twinkle. FFP reminds me that we aren't making any money on this project. Still, I'm only trying to learn. I swore I wanted to learn more about the WEB, PCs, digital video. Only by spending time experimenting can one do that. That's the primary purpose of this journal. Although an underlying need to write (or type!) and to remember where I've been is a secondary reason.

We watch Chocolat and some football. I like the movie. I'm less enthusiastic about football. I don't usually like fables, but it's hard not to enjoy chocolate stirring, the music, the boy's drawing.

I channel surf later and come on an extended commercial for Sharper Image gadgets that you put around your neck to cool off. I've seen these before but for some reason I'm fascinated by this infomercial. It's so amazing how many more gadgets we have today. In the Co-Op today, I was struck with the things that are the same (gum erasers, drawing templates, paper and pens) and the startling new stuff. (A whole separate store of software and handhelds and Ethernet cards and media and such.) How would my life have been different if I had not graduated from college before I was ever able to own a handheld calculator?

That sleepless night is still catching up with me and I'm in bed at a reasonable hour.

sunning, watching the street and staying cool
(rollover for my close up)

"Edmund Wilson aside, everyone who has ever written a
journal or diary at some point seems to have had doubts about the
usefulness of doing so."
Joseph Epstein , Talking to oneself
The New Criterion (Online)

impresssion of the beer selection

JUST TYPING

canard


"Cannes?" he said, candidly.

"No, Caen," she said with canny concern.

"Canaan?" he asked, patting the canine.

"No, Cairns," she said stroking the canary.

"Cancun?" he asked, licking the candy.

"No, Canal Zone," she answering between canapés.

"Canberra?" he asked, fork above cannoli.

"No, Canton," she answered eyeing the canna.

"Candida?" he asked.

"No, cancer."

[With apologies to my friends who suggested this typing. Who knows where it goes?]