2010 — 20 September: Monday
No "West Wing" for a change. Instead we watched "Dear Frankie" (new to both of us) and "Laurel Canyon" (new to Mike). An excellent double bill. Now it's 01:45 and I was happy to find that the motorway was fully unclogged. Twice, earlier, the section going up to Winchester was marked by a "40" limit. G'night.
Let's at least get the day of the week right, shall we? Oops.
I suspect I was even more tired than I realised. Mind you, it didn't stop me reading the elevated prose of Stephen Fry until 03:00 or so. Now (11:09) I seem to have missed quite a lot of a sunny morning. But I've arranged the MOT and car service, and will pay the last "Meals on Wheels" bill for dear mama. I've also ordered my own copy of "Dear Frankie", combining it with the new Jan Garbarek / Officium CD so the morning is not a total write-off at this point.
I was interested to note (in an overnight email from my chum Ian in NZ) that he says his iPad would now already have to be prised from his dying hands1 (not for many years yet, I trust) even as he admits he has unjailbroken it back to its standard operating system. I wonder what the Jobs Kool Aid tastes like.
Interesting?
Up to a point, Lord Copper:
While he didn't seem to value them, Updike's books begin to show how and why an author's library does matter. In his copy of Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full," which was one of Stolle's garage finds, Updike wrote comments like "adjectival monotony" and "semi cliché in every sentence." A comparison with Updike's eventual New Yorker review suggests that authors will write things in their books that they won't say in public.
I almost never write in my books. Mind you, I almost never write books any more :-)
Mind the gap
Reading this story reminds me of a little item from my personal archive:
Christa is working harder than ever. She had a wonderful patent data abstract on (basically) a shit-directing funnel for use on trains in Germany. Remind me never to walk along a German railroad track. There are some gems both of euphemism and mis-translation and mis-typing buried in these abstracts...
I, too, am working harder than ever. Though why the weather chooses to warm up just while I'm lugging heavy cartons of books around is anybody's guess. Good exercise. Somehow it's nearly time for lunch, too. 12:54 has snuck up on me — if I could set the clock in the Yaris I'd have more warning. I would ask the lads to do this during its service on Wednesday, but then I'd have to fail to adjust it away from "summer" time in another month or so.
Silly me
Zanussi's portmanteau word (new to me) obviously must mean "caution with the size of your hot portion"...
Silly Staples
Fancy sending me yet another invoice for damaged goods that have already been returned to them. Aah, the joys of running a large retail operation with unjoined-up processes. I have paid for eight bookcases. So far I've been able to assemble only six undamaged ones. "Hell", "over", "freezes" and "they can wait until" are words that come to mind. I'm a bloody-minded pensioner, you know. It's what we do.
Just (15:19) back — once again — from the storage warehouse. I suspect unpacking and distributing the contents of these will keep me busy for a bit:
Only 28 to go now.
I've lived on this little estate longer than anybody else. And I don't like it when an ambulance calls at one of the houses — it brings back all too many memories, and not generally very good ones. <Sigh>
It's only 22:22 but I'm drooping fast.