Another tidbit from Michigania. We are walking back to the cabin when we hear the beginning strains of “Sweet Caroline” wafting up from the beach:
Me: OH yeah!
Joey: What, you like that song???
Me: Of course! What’s not to love about Neil Diamond?
Joey gazes into my face intently, looking for signs that I’m kidding. I’m not. I try to explain that not loving “Sweet Caroline” is like… not loving America. And it’s even more criminal not to love it when it’s played at top volume on a crowded sunny mid-afternoon beach. Yeah, whatever, he says. And then a few minutes later:
Joey: Is Neil Diamond the one with dark greasy hair?
Me: No, that’s Neil Young.
Joey: Oh yeah. I always confuse them.
Me: Their music is sooooooo different.
Joey: Yeah, I know, but both of their last names are words.
Me: Both of their first names are Neil.
Last Wednesday when we were driving back to Michigania after our traditional mid-week dinner in Petoskey, we accidentally took a wrong turn and found ourselves on a little dirt road that ended, quite abruptly, at a public access boat launch on Walloon Lake. It was an idyllic Northern Michigan-ish spot, complete with whispering pines, the gorgeous lake, birds, wildflowers in profusion, etc. etc. And if that’s not enough, right at the very end, next to the little beach, was this vacant tumble-down old house in a perfectly beautiful lot, neatly hidden away, with a for sale sign…
The very next morning Steve and I bundled the kids off to their various activities and zipped right back. We walked around the house several times, poked around the lot, tried to estimate its size, and daydreamed about fixing up? or razing? the house. We concluded that the public access was so small and inconspicuous that there would be no lack of privacy. We discovered a sweet little bird feeder; we basked in the sights, sounds and smells; and we called the realtor.
“It’s got 175 feet of lakefront,” the guy said helpfully. “They’re asking 1.2 million, but they might be able to drop as far as the low 9s.”
“Honey,” said Steve to me, after we hung up the phone and finished laughing at our misguided selves, “it’s time we get serious about this. We’ve been talking about having a cabin up north for so long, and it’s never gonna happen unless we MAKE it happen. Today we’re gonna buy a lottery ticket!”
We drove back in to Petoskey — what a sweet little town! — and stopped at a used bookstore. Which was an adventure in itself, and I will write a post about it shortly. Anyway we came out of there loaded down with books and very eager to get back to camp and start reading. We hustled back to camp, lugged our books back to the cabin, and dove right in.
“Oh, shoot!” said Steve, a few hours later, surfacing from The Peshawar Lancers. “We forgot to buy the ticket.”
I brought these with me on vacation last week…
Nation, by Terry Pratchett, was charming and kinda cute, if a little simplistic. I’ve never read anything by Pratchett and I didn’t realize that he writes for young adults. I’m not a huge fan of YA, and I don’t much care for parallel universes, but I will forgive almost anything in a book that includes 19th century scientists. Oh yeah!
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers, holy cow, talk about truth in advertising! This book is totally what the title says it is, and I deeply regret everything I said at my last book group about not liking to read memoirs. The author was fresh out of college when both of his parents died just five weeks apart, leaving him to raise his seven-year-old brother, and this book is about that. The reason this memoir works for me, and The Glass Castle did not, is because Dave Eggers doesn’t just write about what happened, but he also writes about the fact that he is writing the memoir; he is very self-conscious about what he is doing. Where Jeanette Walls simply described, Dave Eggers, Dave Eggers… well I don’t know what he does. But you should read it.
The third book, Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares, whoa. I wish I was better at reading Latin American authors. This guy was a great friend of Jorge Luis Borges and of course it’s got all that magical realism stuff in it that I keep trying to like. In this book, a guy’s wife trades bodies with a dog, and a mental hospital is involved. Shades of Kafka for sure. The back cover, and also the scholarly introduction, assure me that the novel is hilarious… but… um, okay. It’s short and sweet, though, and it definitely held my attention all the way through. Plus the protagonist is a watchmaker, and you know how I feel about fictional watchmakers. Hoo boy. (Or should I say hoo Bioy?)
Several things contributed to my desire to re-enter the blogosphere.
- I have a brand spankin new iPhone, which means I have a camera with me AT ALL TIMES! Therefore, I must document everything. Because I can!
- I fell in love with WordPress all over again when 3.0 was released. Yum!
- I’m getting a little tired of trying to concoct interesting / amusing / witty status updates in 140 characters or less. Oh, I’m not leaving Facebook, but why limit myself?
- I have finally come to terms with the demise of my laptop. It would be too depressing to list all the things that are wrong with it; suffice it to say that it would cost more to fix it than to replace it. I haven’t actually bought the new one yet, but just knowing it’s in the works has made the idea of blogging totally fun again.
So… I decided to stick with onthecurve.net, though I took down the dozen or so posts that I wrote here in early 2009. I like the name On the Curve; it implies all kinds of cheesy but nice things like learning curves, when life throws you curve balls [fill in the blank], river bends, and road trips. Hence the cheesy but nice photo: it’s a curve, see, and I’m on it.