rootofnewt | stuff

Woke up too late for the farmer's market.

Need to go buy the food for taking to the beach. Also need to pack today and finish laundry.

I relented and went to Walmart for a beach towel yesterday. KMart only had really cheap ones left. Marshall's, Goody's, and Bed/Bath/Beyond had none (because, you know, summer's over)... I didn't feel like walking in the mall and wasn't sure I'd find any, anyhow. So that left Walmart. I find a nice one, though. On sale, too. It's not printed, either, but woven with differently colored yarns (I prefer woven patterns to one-sided prints). It's a large towel, too.

We also bought a couple inexpensive books at B&N to take to the beach. I picked up Rutherfurd's London. I've read Sarum and Russka, though it's been over 10 years since Sarum and at least six for Russka. I also picked up another book of essays/vignettes by Thomas Lynch, poet mortician extraordinaire: Bodies In Motion And At Rest. I really like Lynch's work. We first stumbled on him while admiring a Border's Halloween window display--lots of good books. We saw his collection The Undertaking: Life studies from the dismal trade and then noticed the author's name. Suffice it to say, we teased

explodingcat about having been published and not telling us about it, then I bought it. We liked it enough that when I saw this latest collection in the bargain pile, I grabbed it. It was actually published in 2001, but somehow I managed to miss it. I'm not sure how.

Sadly, all of our attempts to hear Lynch speak or read have been stymied by date errors in calendars and announcements. *sigh*

Still, though, how can I not love the words of a man who beings the introduction of this book thusly:

People sometimes ask me why I write. Because, I tell them, I don't golf. This gives me two or three days a week - five or six the way my brother was doing it before he had a mid-life crisis and took up Rollerblades. But a couple of days every week at least, with a few hours in them in which to read or write. It's all the same thing to me, reading and writing, twins of the one conversation. We're either speaking or are spoken to. And I don't drink. I did, of course, and plenty of it, but had to quit for the usual reasons. It got to where I was spilling so much of it. Bodies at Motion and at Rest, Thomas Lynch

Yes. Humor. Seriousness. Candid and honest and whimsical. It just gets better from there. Find it. Read it.

i should shower, dress, then go say hello to the landlord and his wife.

explodingcat forgot one of the best quotes yesterday, by the way:
"It looks like you'll have the same problem one of my cousins had--you'll have to pick those tomatoes with a helicopter."

Okay, work to do. Tonight, The Brides and Turn Pale at the Dawning.

xiane, if you need me to play a round of Heckle the Hoosiers, just give me a call or direct them to my door. I can entertain. ;)