Dear friends and readers ( Read more... )

Friends, it's still a problem but I'm trying to face it. I'm home from the EC/ASECS conference whose sessions and papers I'll blog about starting tomorrow. Today I was occupied with settling back in and trying to finish the re-arrangement of books and taking back more of upstairs (attic); re-arrangement of bookcases and books as well as some re- ( Read more... )

"Duchess, it needs something", said the admiral, pointing to the brick-work supports. "Oh dear," replied I, disheartened.

They do look like arms, or pieces of cathedral buttresses which broke away from the configuration and have been placed upside down. They stick out underneath the window to the left side of our house as you face it. I looked. Yes ( Read more... )

Friends and readers,

The weather outside my window not far from the central of Old Town Alexandria. For the rain it raineth every day. It's raining very hard and steadily. It's dank, chilled out there. A little while ago I heard a miserable cat cry out; I looked to see if it was one of my neighbor's cats but could not see the poor creature or I ( Read more... )

Journal:

10/14 (Sunday) ( Cont'd):

Upstairs downstairs a better name for story than House improvements.

Took a new direction. Unplugged little fat (heavy) TV in room on library table, together with VHS cassette player (going) and rewinder (just about gone). Haul up. Then weeding out VHS cassettes make a vaster space than I predicted (I have a lot more ( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

I'm keeping a record, so:

10/1/12:

Not so modest improvements begun. Very nice man in jeans, lovely shirt, came and made estimate for removing hedge, making two modest flower beds (silver ferns, daffodils). Discussed land: swamp on one side, rocky down back so beds go on one good side. Don't want all sorts of drains and stuff ( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

Did you know today was Bloomsday? June 16th. The day all of Joyce's Ulysses takes place on. I had heard of a custom whereby people who love Joyce's book or want to celebrate great Irish literature and culture spend all day June 16th reading selections from Ulysses. We joined in for the first time today. The great irony is ( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

I first began this thinking about what do with my summer on May 13; that was the day before I proctored my second and last final; I sent in the grades on May 16; and I wrote again that my problem was partly solved on May 18 when I discovered that my essay on Trollope film adaptations had been published in close to its ( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

Perhaps I should use this diary blog to record the day I got a new computer at last. We bought it about a week and a half ago when my 5+ old computer began to rattle; it was the fan or something more ominous. I had been finding that I was overloading the computer with my saved movies and sometimes it would just freeze up. ( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

Amazon is no longer presenting itself as primarily a bookstore. After having destroyed so many bookstores, ruthlessly marginalized so much of its competition, bullied individual authors, sidelined groups the store management will not keep their mainstream bland reputation, they have changed their front face to be a ( Read more... )