Book 'em, Danno!

I took back the most recent audiobooks and hardcover without finishing them.

Considering Doris Day [Tom Santopietro]. I read the intro and a page or two of the first chapter. Not sure if the problem is bad writing or sloppy editing. A simple find/replace would have taken care of one phrase that the author is obviously fond of, because it crops up at least three times in the little that I read. Could have been a fascinating book. Still might be for some; differences in opinion are what make horse races, or so they tell me.

Service with a Smile [P.G. Wodehouse]. Probably will revisit this one; I liked the premise and the narrator but was not in the right fey mood for the story.

Standing in the Rainbow [Fannie Flagg]. I listened to most of it. There was a damaged CD that ate a critical plot transition, so I just took it back to the library and let them know.

To briefly revisit the book meme from July, I crossed one off the list. Here are my thoughts:

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. Bought 7/14/07 and commenced immediately. By the time I left for church the following day, I had read the first section on Italy. I need to warn the tender-spirited of you that there is definitely profanity in there, including the word I like least, but it is generally in the context of translating a phrase from the Italian, and the part where she translates the spate of colorful language expressed by a grandpa at a soccer game is both appalling and hilarious. I am probably going to have to repent for laughing so hard. But I love the way in which she describes how she began to acquire faith in God; it is not unlike Anne Lamott's conversion story, or my own.

OK, enough literary musings. On to some of a mathematical nature.

Firstborn and Middlest have birthdays five years apart and nine days apart. Middlest’s birthday is two days before my dad’s, and Firstborn’s is seven days after.

Secondborn and Fourthborn have birthdays five years apart and nine days apart. Secondborn’s birthday is two days before my sister’s, and Fourthborn’s is seven days after.

So naturally, we expected LittleBit to arrive either two days before her father’s birthday, or seven days after; that was the established pattern. LittleBit, however, is independent as a hog on ice [not unlike her mother] and showed up when she was darned good and ready, and not a moment before.

BittyBit was born three days after LittleBit’s birthday. And BittyBubba was born three days after Firstborn’s birthday.

It’s probably something having to do with fractals.

Since I posted about the un-Blinked cable needle yesterday morning, I thought you might enjoy the following:

Last year was the year of the Prodigal Sock [at this point I’d have to fish through my archives to remind myself *which* sock was misbehaving]. This appears to be the year of the Prodigal Earring. I had a pair of inexpensive pearlesque earrings that were the right size for a woman of my proportions, went with everything, and made me feel like the Queen of Sheba.

One day I was sitting at my desk at work and realized that a “pearl” had gone AWOL. The post was still in my ear, but the cabochon had disappeared. I immediately took my earrings out. I’m the first person you see if you come to our office, and God [as they say – “they” being variously attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, or Gustave Flaubert] is in the details.

A couple of months later as I was test-driving my Swiffer Flick on the carpet, I spied what looked like a shankless pearl button. I knew exactly what it was. And I stopped sweeping to take it back to my room, where the post and its non-Prodigal mate had been waiting patiently on a bookshelf.

No, wait, it gets better. I had no idea where my glue gun was, so I grabbed the double-stick tape and trimmed a piece to fit the back of the cabochon. A little push, and I was good to go. I figured that I’d stop at the craft store on the drive home to pick up a tube of E-6000 for a more permanent bond.

About an hour after getting to work, I reached up to adjust the earring back and realized that the pearl had slipped its leash again. As I was laughing at the irony of having found it only to lose it once more, with no idea where it might be, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. The cabochon had rolled under my desk, not all that far from where I got in trouble with the panic button back in May, and it was smirking like Bruce Willis at having outsmarted me.

One of my co-workers who is a pageant mom came to my rescue. She uses E-6000 to reattach errant rhinestones to her daughter’s pageant dresses.

I leave you with this from Longhorn Diva. Scroll down to the final photo. I asked for permission to publish it, and she replied that it's a stock photo that has been floating around the internet for awhile.

I am heading to my room with some empty boxes, a mug of milk, and the bag of gingersnaps. This is, after all, Labor Day. If you don’t hear from me in a reasonable time, it’s safe to assume that the packing peanuts have turned cannibalistic, and further packing will be unnecessary.