Really Random Stuff

1) Over the weekend at the bookstore, in which I was lingering partly to avoid the 100-degree heat here, I finally remembered to look at the ending of Ian McEwan’s Atonement to see what all of the fuss was about. Now I know, and what’s more, I’ve got my dose of literary fiction for the year without having to have actually read the whole book. A nice day’s work, if you ask me.

2. Since receiving some research materials earlier this spring bound in pressboard binders, I have become increasingly addicted to pressboard binders. On Monday night Hubby came home from the office supply store with a package of shiny new ones for me, and last night I started punching holes in some of my research material so I could put them in the binders. They’re beautiful. Now all I need is one of those hole punchers that can do fifty pages at a time.

This may partially explain why my daughter never tells her friends, “My mother is cool.”

3. I have fifty dollars in my wallet. There are fifty dollars worth of new books I want from the bookstore, including Sandra Gulland’s new novel. Coincidence? I think not.

4. Since the end of May, I have walked out to the mailbox with a spring in my step, eagerly anticipating the arrival of the four-volume Harleian 433 manuscript, which is published by the Richard III Society and which has all sorts of useful information in it for someone doing research in the period. (That hammering you hear is another nail in my coffin of uncoolness.) Each day, I have trudged back with sagging shoulders, hands full of bills but not with the Harleian 433. One would think that the Richard III Society, devoted as it is to a man who could condemn and execute a man within a space of a couple of hours (the subject of my next post), would be a tad more efficient. I have arrived at several explanations for this delay:

a. The people in the UK responsible for posting the manuscript have all gone on one of those long vacations to wonderful locales that no one in the United States can afford except for the parents of my daughter’s friends.

b. The Richard III Society has been secretly infiltrated by devotees of Henry Tudor, and this is all part of a sinister master plot to take it over by breeding discontent.

c. The fault lies not at all in the UK, but with agents of the Bush administration who have intercepted the package on the premise that anyone receiving four books from overseas with a weird title when they could be buying ghostwritten books by members of the Bush family at Wal-Mart is up to something sinister.

I’ll keep you posted.

9 thoughts on “Really Random Stuff”

  1. You never fail to give me a good chuckle.

    Maybe agents intercepted the book and instantly realized that the Bush Administration would want a copy! Bush would say when he saw it, “Hey isn’t that the hunchback guy who killed off his nucular family to become king? I gotta see what his secret was.”

  2. LOL Susan. My daughter thinks that I’m uncool too – maybe we should start an ‘Uncool Historically Obsessed Mum’s Club’. Then we could swap tips on how to REALLY embarrass them!

  3. Could it be some really pedestrian reason, like they despatched it surface mail (I think it still exists) to save money? Or there are so many eager buyers that they sold the entire print run in the first 0.006 seconds and are having to wait for reprints?

  4. Susan Higginbotham

    Gabriele, I wouldn’t be all surprised.

    Nan, thanks!

    Lady D., I would welcome such a club. Being uncool is something that one has to constantly work at. Today I went into a clothing store and said to my daughter, “That music’s way too loud.” I think I could have done a lot better–perhaps I should have asked the clerk to turn it down. That would have been uber-uncool.

    Carla, the prosaic explanation I received is that the person who ships out the orders never got the e-mail from the person who got the payment. But that may just be an elaborate cover up for A, B, or C.

  5. In a music shop, the best thing for total daughter embarassment is to start dancing in a very uncool way and flirting with the youngest boy on the till! Works a treat, believe me! 🙂

  6. Susan Higginbotham

    Thanks for the advice, Lady D! Monster Paperbag, thanks for stopping by!

  7. That was a good chuckle! I especially liked the part about the infiltration of the Richard III society by the Tudor fans. I think Henry VII would have loved it 🙂

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