I have ordered new glasses. This is a good thing, as my old pair had a screw loose. Then, when attempting to bring them in to be fixed, the entire right lens was somehow misplaced. (I still claim no responsibility whatever for this.) Finally, somewhere along the way, not one but
both nosepads were misplaced. You can very well imagine that these glasses,
qua glasses, did not function very effectively. Actually, I'm rather at a loss to imagine
qua what they would function effectively. Perhaps as a decoy to prevent a rather near-sighted thief from taking your very nice new glasses.
Like mine. My new glasses are very nice, and they promised very solemnly to rush them so I would get them before I go back to New York, so that means by Friday and hopefully I shall have pictures soon. Because they're just that cool.
( On Monday I went to the doctor and I haven't yet been back, but I'll report on the whole experience anyway. )Yesterday was far more pleasant. My dad played hooky from work and took me to the
Nelson-Atkins and I read offering formulae in ancient Egyptian to him, and we split a piece of lovely sour raspberry tart. Then, as we were in the neighborhood, we went to the Barnes and Noble on the Plaza, found ourselves those comfy chairs that are so conspicuous by their absence in the many Barnes and Nobles of Manhattan, and read for a couple of hours.
He got a copy of the new John Grisham book, as was pretty inevitable since my family isn't due to get one from the library for some time now. My family introduces pretty much everything he writes into their eclectic reading diet, ever since once upon a time we were staying in a lakeside cabin in Minnesota with my second cousin once removed and her family, and it was filled with books that had been rejected for purposes of filling shelves elsewhere, and it tended to show. I derived most of my entertainment from a volume of Roger Ebert's movie reviews (I haven't seen many movies now and I'd seen a damn sight fewer then, but the power of a snarky classic Ebert review cannot be denied) and from a paperback copy of
The Rainmaker.
I like that they read John Grisham books, because, for whatever reason, all the various human foibles that make fiction interesting that are normally grounds for rejecting them for being immoral are somehow permissible so long as they occur in the context of a John Grisham book. Especially if they are read aloud as audiobooks by some guy named Frank, who has actually become the voice in my head as I try to read any John Grisham books; they usually keep one of the tapes in the tape player in the kitchen, and my little brother, especially, turns them on whenever he goes into the kitchen. This is all the more intriguing to me because I don't usually have a voice in my head when I read.
I just scanned better samples of my handwriting for my website, and you can expect that to go live sometime soon.
Oh, I have learnt that there are books in
tubs in my closet. This is so wrong. Books should never be in tubs, for they are inaccessible, out of order, and impossible to read. However, I must allow that there is absolutely no shelf space left in my room ...