Book Zen

I've decided I'm going on a buying spree. I'm going to buy books while they can still be bought. Real, honest to goodness books.

My decision is spurred by Borders Books going out of business - apparently because electronic books have pushed demand for the real thing lower than low.

While I understand the convenience of one of those electronic book reading gadgets, there is a loss associated with those things. Absolutely nothing is more relaxing than being in a place filled with bound volumes of paper; nothing more comforting that than the feel of heavy paper beneath your fingertips; nothing more Zen than sitting with a hardback book in your lap.

I envision the furniture in my home office being moved out one piece at a time until all that is left is a small writing place and a comfortable chair. Everything else will be sacrificed for floor to ceiling bookcases. Bookcases along the walls. Bookcases back to back in the center of the room. Bookcases filled with books of various sizes and shapes. Bookcases providing a retreat where, after a long day, I can inhale the scent of print on paper, run my finger along creased spines, grasp a favorite book just as I would shake hands with an old friend.  There in my office I will know that at least in one corner of the world the rightness of things still remains.

Vacation Biking

For those of us who live in a tourist destination, our source of entertainment is - watching the tourists.

Oh sure there are days when we "locals" curse the gridlock brought about by the influx of transients, but such frustrations are offset by watching those same visitors when they're on foot - or on bikes.

The beach seems to favorite place for bike riding. For those tourists who don't ride two wheeled conveyances on a regular basis - a pedal powered surrey eliminates the necessity to maintain balance.

For those of you unfamiliar with the four wheeled surrey - it's essentially an adult size version of the pedal cars toddlers ride in. Only adults seem to lose the common sense children are born with. As evidenced by the foursome who took their pedal car down the main drag of our beach town today.

To avoid being driven to the curb by traffic, the foursome in the surrey were forced to pedal as furiously as nasty old Almira Gulch in the Wizard of Oz.  Hunched over, legs pumping, brows dripping with perspiration, the "sensible" adults were in danger of collapsing from heat stroke.

I thought the idea of vacation was to get out of the rat race.

Memories - Old & New

I'll be away from the internet for a few days and offer the following for your consideration:

Trying to relive a golden moment from the past is like trying to scoop water with a colander.

Relish the moment for what it was - and live each successive today with the hopes of creating a new special moment.

The Original Facebook

Sitting in a chair near our community pool, I was watching a girl of about ten hanging on the pool's metal steps and trying to get her mother's attention.

Mom, come into the pool with me.

Mom, come ON!


Mommmm, you promised!

Finally the girl climbed from the pool, stalked across the concrete, and with hands on hips stood in front of her mother.  MOM  what is taking so long.

Her mother raised a cautioning finger. I'm taking dear.

Talking?  All this time? How boring is that?

The person talking with the girl's mother looked at the young girl and said.  "Dear, swimming pools are the adult version of Facebook."

Oh, the girl said - the peevishness gone from her voice.  Well send my Mom over as soon as you're done.

Severing the Cord

How long has it been since wireless internet connectivity became a household standard?  Surely no more than seven years and already we take it for granted. At least I do anyway.

Tonight I sit on the back patio sending typewritten words sailing through the air and remember back to when even a telephone conversation required an umbilacle cord - that curly elastic cord that connected the handset to the black box hanging on the wall. The same cord that teenagers tied in knots as they dared to ask someone out on a date. The same cord that parents swore over when they struggled to untie the knots their kids had tied - and discovered in the midst of the coils the two #2 pencils that had disappeared from the kitchen message center days before.

What will the "standard" be seven years from now I wonder.

Weebles Wobble

Weebles wobble but they don't fall down.

That jingle from a television commercial has been running through my head recently - resurrected from the memory vaults by a young'in that has been roaming our house recently.

Media Girl has been doing some babysitting to put some extra money in her pocket. One of the tykes she's been watching eats anything - whether it moves or not - and consequently has the physical appearance of a two foot tall Buddha.

It seems impossible that a child with a belly big enough to hold the face on a grandfather clock doesn't topple over on her own face. Yet somehow, despite an occasional wobble in her step, the little girl manages to remain upright.

I'm very nearly convinced that were I to tap against the back of her head, the baby would fall forward only to bounce right back to her feet.

Meal Menu

Ah, the summertime diet: garden salad, fruit salad, cucumber salad, potato salad, and seafood salad.

Yes, we had a saladfest this weekend. It seemed the kitchen counter was perpetually littered with squeeze bottles of mayonnaise, assorted spices, piles of chopped onion and celery, and of course mixing bowls filled with garden-fresh blends.

You might think we had a house full of people but that wasn't the case. It was just Motivated Mom, Media Girl and I. It wasn't until we reached to the back of the bottom kitchen cabinet for the very last tupperware container that we thought to ask ourselves - whose going to eat all this stuff?

Forget the meat and bread - this week's meal menu is salad alacarte. The eating doesn't get any better that this.