Here's a little item...
I tend to post infrequently here, and when I do, it's usually about books I've written or edited - but not always. So just to break that up, here's a little news item which just blindsided me, and my reaction to it.
My friend Ken, one of the Outlanders and my oldest friend, just got engaged over the weekend. He posted this information with an email subject-lined "An Earth-Shattering Kaboom", which indicates a little something about him and about our respective reactions to this news.
Yeah.
Sweet.
Kaboom.
I've been hearing about this lady for a while now from him, but this news took everybody by surprise. He's been planning a trip out to see us for a while now, postponed until July, but hey, now instead of getting to meet his girl, I get to meet his fiancée. Which is a statement which I never thought I would be able to write. (Ken occasionally thought that was a pretty remote concept too, from time to time, so I think nobody's more thrilled about it than he is.)
Having known the man from boyhood, from sleepovers to team-based intellectual competitions to sharing an apartment with him, I feel a certain qualification to say that he's a difficult person to get to know: Ken's book has always been something of a locked journal, and I think that's been, in part, by design. This bespeaks all sorts of things, then, about the woman who's managed not only to take him off the shelf, but pick the lock and write herself into his pages - that's a rare woman, and I have to say that I can't wait to meet her.
Way to go, Ken. Congratulations.
Kaboom, indeed.
My friend Ken, one of the Outlanders and my oldest friend, just got engaged over the weekend. He posted this information with an email subject-lined "An Earth-Shattering Kaboom", which indicates a little something about him and about our respective reactions to this news.
Yeah.
Sweet.
Kaboom.
I've been hearing about this lady for a while now from him, but this news took everybody by surprise. He's been planning a trip out to see us for a while now, postponed until July, but hey, now instead of getting to meet his girl, I get to meet his fiancée. Which is a statement which I never thought I would be able to write. (Ken occasionally thought that was a pretty remote concept too, from time to time, so I think nobody's more thrilled about it than he is.)
Having known the man from boyhood, from sleepovers to team-based intellectual competitions to sharing an apartment with him, I feel a certain qualification to say that he's a difficult person to get to know: Ken's book has always been something of a locked journal, and I think that's been, in part, by design. This bespeaks all sorts of things, then, about the woman who's managed not only to take him off the shelf, but pick the lock and write herself into his pages - that's a rare woman, and I have to say that I can't wait to meet her.
Way to go, Ken. Congratulations.
Kaboom, indeed.