October 07, 2001 - 8:29 p.m.
Down steep and narrow lanes I see the chimneys smoking
above the golden fields ... know what the robin feels
in his summer jamboree.
All elements agree
in sweet and stormy blend,
midwife to winds that send me home.
I drove to Boone on Friday, listening to the light fiction I had grabbed off the library's shelf while trying to keep up with Zack, who gets bored looking at all the tape cases when I won't let him open them and scatter the contents all over the aisles: The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett. Unabridged. And, in case I decided I didn't like that I also had Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. (Thanks to VirginiaMom and Catallus for the suggestions - I didn't check my guestbook in time for this trip, but I will remember for the next.) But, although I spent over 14 hours in the car this weekend, I finished listening to neither. More on that below.
University was a great time as always. I missed seeing some of the regulars, who couldn't make it this time for various reasons (hope to see you all in Febrary!) Richard handed over the Chancellor's job to Ysolt and I thnk she's going to do a great job at it.
We found a pretty good Japanese place - Sakura's - for dinner and they were kind enough to push together tables to accomodate our ungangly group of eleven. Good food - hot and served quickly. We were quite hungry. I gave myself a bit of a stomach ache from eating too fast. Stayed up in the hotel watching Iron Chef with Susie and David, talking role playing games and other such geek topics and caravaned back to I-40 with them this morning, again listening to Pratchett because I've just got to know about the "gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya."
Sounds odd taken out of context like that.
Around Greensboro, Mike calls me to tell me the news about Afganistan and I pull over to tell David and Susie in the car behind me. We spent a little time leap-frogging so they could hold up Susie's notebook, where she would write the radio station number with the latest news broadcasts on it for me. I wasn't having much luck finding one. By the time I turned on to 58, I decided to return to the book, but am still about 1.5 tapes from the end of the story....
I found Mike and Zack at home watching football - Zack looking all rolly-polly in his sweatsuit and very happy to tell me, mostly in baby talk, about his whole weekend. His vocabulary is increasing exponentially by the day and he's learning to ennunciate, too. He put his bath toys away tonight, chanting "go back... go back." Now if I can just get him to say "please" instead of "sit."
