in no particular order & quickly before I conk out

Fun poetry reading at Toomer's Coffee this eve

Picked up the sewing machine at Opelika Sewing Center yesterday after its cleaning... priming up for the next quilt project

Incredibly funny dog vid à la Brokeback Mountain (The vid is down a bit but the post is well worth the read on your way... Make sure your speakers are on. Oh - and don't you dare miss the credits.) Probably funnier if you saw the movie - quite uncanny actually - but still worthwhile for non-Brokeback-initiates.

Almost got run over by a Waste Mgmt truck this morning even tho I had the right of way and was a good 9 feet into the crosswalk as he approached and then continued to make an against-the-signal left turn in front of me. I decided to defer to his tonnage; after all, if I had got hit, sure, I could sue them or something but I'd also be flatter 'n flounder, which would kind of defeat the fun of being solvent.

Severe weather and tornadoes due tomorrow. Funny how storm seasons are getting not only palpably scarier year to year but start earlier and last longer, huh? (This of course directed at all of you who persist in believing that Al Gore and 400 million scientists and meteorologists just pulled the whole global warming idea out of their collective ass.)

And while I'm being LIBERAL and SUBVERSIVE, I have to say the documentary on Howard Zinn that I watched tonight was sublime, tho no less than he, himself, of course. (Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train)

And yes, ladies and gents, for the SIXTH time in nearly as many years, I called Books-A-Million for a book only to have them tell me they didn't have it, upon which oh-so-surprising news I trekked out there my Own Damn Self and OF COURSE walked right to the title sitting there on the shelf. Granted once a year may not seem to you to be much of a trend, exactly, so you'll have to take my word for it (or that of my 9 years' experience in the retail book world) that this is simply unacceptable and such ineptitude would NEVER have been even close to replicated at either the Book Stop or the Beachwood, Ohio, Borders. Of course this time since I was fully strep'd out and fever-y and had seen the frigging book there 3 days prior which, OK yes, pretty dorky not to buy it when I had the first chance but I was trying not to be impulsive for once for crying out lout this time counts quadruple... Don't get me started on my quandary cum diatribe on why in the heck BAM is now the 3rd largest book retailer in the nation.

I think I better either get the heck outta here soon or just go ahead and admit I'm starting to become southern (in some ways at least). I actually called someone with the respect-form "Miss Given-name" COMPLETELY AUTOMATICALLY AND INADVERTENTLY at Opelika Sewing Center, namely (npi) Miss Rita the quilting foot expert. (Really this form should be something that comes more quickly to yankees who have studied French since in French one has a tendency to use Madame or Monsieur as a respect marker for people one knows fairly closely but is kind of on a not-quite-first-name-basis with, so it's either completely unsurprising or very much so that it so long for it to start showing up on its own chez moi, depending on the subconscious cultural learning curve you want to allow me.)

Or, the clincher to my southernspeak transition: twice this week I used "Bless your heart" non-ironically!

Yet, I will never find it anything but surreal for someone to be actually polling café patrons at a neighboring table as to their thoughts on when the Rapture will come, as was the case yesterday at Cambridge Coffee while I was waiting for one of my high schooler tutorees. (This is non-ironic, too, honest. No offense to believers, it's simply strange to me, plus I can't get that wacky Mimi Rogers movie out of my head at the mere mention of the word.)

I can't believe the Book Stop is moving (in Tucson for those of you not from there and scratching your heads about now). Their new building owners have decided to actively run all the old tenants off by boosting rents so Tina and Claire had to seek a new spot. They will be on 4th Ave (one of the most personality-stuffed areas of the Old Pueblo even tho they are nearer the underpass end than the quaint end) as of Aug. 1. The current lease is up in May, however, so T, C, Kate, and the whole crew are scrambling to pack up and store thousands of titles and bookshelves and umpteen years of the kind of fun miscellanea which tend to collect in really cool used bookstores for the summer months. I really really REALLY (no, but TRULY) tried to figure a way time- and money-wise to go help but alas it is not to be. (Call me crazy but that kind of work really does sound fun, plus --duh-- with the old équipe!)

Grading 103 tests and compos each this weekend plus will try to get enough sleep to truly knock the remnants of my resp. infection out for good. I'm sure the neighbors will be happy, too, if my hacking could be reduced.

Back to my not-quite-so-cold-as-15-minutes-ago Stella Artois and Gaskell's North & South, which I am adoring more with each passing day. Wives & Daughters was tremendous but this one may yet surpass it. Here's a taste of one facet of its lustre, which is going to make you think it's just a romance but you would be sorely mistaken, and you'd probably be particularly surprised to know it's as much a primer of early industrial England labor relations as a corset piece...

It appeared to Mr Thornton that all these graceful cares were habitual to the family; and especially of a piece with Margaret. She stood by the tea-table in a light-coloured muslin gown which had a good deal of pink about it. She looked as if she was not attending to the conversation, but solely busy with the teacups, among which her round ivory hands moved with pretty, noiseless daintiness. She had a bracelet on one taper arm, which would fall down over her round wrist. Mr Thornton watched the re-placing of this troublesome ornament with far more attention than he listened to her father. It seemed as if it fascinated him to see her push it up impatiently, until it tightened her soft flesh; and then to mark the loosening -- the fall.
--Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Penguin, 1985.