You know, with weekends like this I'll be glad to get back to work for a little relaxation.
The guest bath finds itself another hairs breadth closer to completion as I scrubbed dutifully at the floor today and reset the toilet. The rest of the morning was shot by an inexplicable malaise that lasted even after several fruitless hours browsing the local bookmongers. Inspiration did strike later and my wife and I managed to heave off the linoleum in the kitchen in preparation for for the magnum opus of tiling the kitchen. I do not look forward to tiling in such tight spaces as the refrigerator nook.
One thing I did take note of while circumnavigating the city today was the ubiquity of 'In God We Trust' plates. While I think everyone should be free to express whatever they believe I am still waiting for the 'Whose God is it anyway?' plates to become available. I further wonder if the buyers of these plates realize that, unlike other specialty plates, there's no actual charity getting anything from their purchase. The pay the state the extra $45 for the plate and the state promptly keeps it. It seems to defeat the purpose unless the purpose is that of conspicuous consumption. Going back to the WWJD concept, I suspect that Jesus might just recommend that people simply give the $45 to a real charity rather than trying to advertise what good Christians they are on their bumper. That said, I still laugh at those bumper stickers that say, "In case of rapture this car will become unmanned." Ahh, the pompousness.
Yesterday one of my wife's friends said that I was finally starting to look healthy again. On further questioning she indicated that a few months ago I was looking gaunt. The only appropriate response I could think of was to blink back at her incredulously. At my lowest I was 237 pounds (down from 325 in college) and I'd hardly call that gaunt. Now at a jolly 245 I can't imagine those 8 pounds really make a difference. Clearly someone just caught me on a bad day.
So if you're ever in the Borders in Castleton take a visit to men's stall #2. If someone's in there just kick them out. Tell them you have important research to do. Now, as you walk in on the right you'll see some unpleasantness. Just ignore that. On the inside of the door you'll notice some Russian (well, something in Cyrillic anyway). Unless you know Russian ignore that too. Just to the left of the toilet paper holder you'll see a paragraph written in pen. I wish I'd had a camera to take a picture but basically the text goes something like this: "July 9th, 2007. From this day forward I solemnly pledge to get my life together. I'm going to go back and graduate from college. I'm going to give my girlfriend a reason to love me and be more responsible for my life. " I was honestly dumbfounded. This is a whole new level of bathroom graffiti that I'd really never expected to find. I wonder what ever happened with THAT anonymous wall scribbler?
Alright, on to less mundane bantering. I did pound out a few pages of Little Women tonight after the dust settled and one thing that really impresses me is the way she so readily references other literature. Every character is referred to a "Mrs. This" or a "Mr. That" from some novel of the time that her contemporary readers would have known. It seems that modern society is not nearly so well read though certainly if I said, "He was a real George Costanza" you'd know exactly what I'm saying. Perhaps it's all one in the same but it seems a shame that we've moved from being able to readily quote Shakespeare and Dickens at the drop of a hat to memorizing lines from "Full Metal Jacket."
Lastly, while on my circuitous trip to my usual bookstore haunts I heard a bit on NPR about... well, I heard a bit about a lot of things but one thing in particular caught my attention. Specifically, someone has done a rather obvious study that reading Shakespeare makes you more intelligent. Now, as much total bullshit as that statement is it's never a bad thing to put your mind through a few textual acrobatics and herpaps hiccup a new word or three. So I close tonight's post with a few words picked out from tonight's reading.
"After much study and careful thought Diane finally decided that Terrill's seeming complaisance was merely a diaphanous affectation of company loyalty and an attempt to curry favor in anticipation of his impending review. Now the only question that remained was how best to reap the tares while disturbing the rest of the department as little as possible."
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