Erin's birthday yesterday, the big One Eight. he was eleven when Beth and I married. seems like yesterday, yet so much has passed in our lives, the three of us. I guess I don't have the words right now to speak further. we will have a party for Erin next week. he goes to a Spring Formal tonight, homeschoolers en masse. yesterday, well, we made our way to Barnes & Noble, the default place to go. for some reason, I looked avidly at the leather bound journals. I used to think such were la-de-dah, and preferred to stick with spiral bound notebooks for my limning needs. Beth got me interested in using bound journals, which I do occasionally now. one's writing changes with milieu, so to speak. I noted that Alan Davies carried a small yellow lined notepad, which, personally, I would avoid for the pages being easily detachable. but that could be an advantage. do you have funny little ways? I hate taking pages out of a spiral notebook. like it matters. but someone asks, can I have a piece of paper and I'm holding a notebook, and I'm like, er. honestly. so those journals with the wrap around leather flap and the leather tie thing seem so cool. but in sooth such notebooks are no more handy than, so I gave the temptation a pass. B&N seems like a wise and knowing place, as you scan about. quite a large display, and handy, of books on poker, for example. finger on the cultural pulse. check out the eye-popping displays and you can see where we stand. a friend of mine long ago remarked about The Gong Show that it gave us a comprehensive view of ourselves. so it's poker, and how to cook Cajun, and pilates, etc. okay, I find this fascinating. I was quite tempted by a book on gladiators. I mean, that's the weird part of history. I saw a finely wrought book about a mountain climber who, a blurbist wrote, made the most elegant climb of Everest. I don't even fathom what that means. it was an expensively produced book aimed, I wot, at a particular audience. I'm fascinated by Everest but there's a point past which I don't want to go, armchair traveler-wise. the poetry section remains dull. I should be tempted by the David Shapiro selected but it was a hardback with that kind of pre-emptive brusqueness that larger poetry publishers inveigh upon their books. it's a dust-attracting quality that puts me off. what????? I mean the smell of poetry books at the library, where they moulder unread. this has nothing to do with Shapiro, who I've hardly read. and yet, maybe it does. maybe I want my poetry books to be crappy editions, that I can scribble in, that don't have 2" margins, that... okay, I'm raving. I saw a book by Harryette Mullen, who people hold in higher regard than I do, I guess. I find her work ordinary, which, I know, is harsh. every poetry book at B&N looks tired, or nearly so. UCal came out with a paperback edition of Berrigan's collected, which, honestly, looks more attractive to me than the luscious hardback. it's smaller, handier and just seems more right. that's sort of what I mean about the Shapiro. B&N has a lot of manga but displays them wretchedly. they only show the spines, which are crowded and hard to read, so it's difficult to see what's what. I hate how you had ought to buy all 10 of the series, for just $99.99. I did see one 'starring' Avril Lavigne, who is described as a 'rebel rocker'. I don't think so but you may disagree. Beth found the graphic novel version of 300. it just lacked the splendid ridiculousness of the movie. the bloodletting, and falling into space and Rupaul as Xerxes: all that is much more visceral and effective in the movie. anyway, Erin something D&D, Beth some gifts plus a book on religion and a Terry Pratchett that somehow she'd missed and me nuthin'. we ate out at the cheap Italian restaurant in town. this restaurant supplies the center of town with the exquisite smell of garlic, tho that garlic doesn't seem to show up in any dishes. the place is always packed. we arranged Happy Birthday to be sung by the waitresses when dessert came. drove around after dinner. headed dreictly towards the radiant orb. what, are you stepping westward? into the New England countryside. some horsy towns, some factory owns. I love New England's factories, set by rivers. most are no longer factories but condos or otherwise used. busy little towns. and for garden artistry, just plant daffodils. pests don't mess with daffodil, and they flourish. yesterday, it seems, the season popped. verdure starting in the trees, blossoms, and bonanza of bulbs a-bloom. tis fine. drove past the hospital where my grandmother died 30 years agone. I remember the nearby apple orchards blooming at the time. I remember, too, several trips to her place to deal with her effects. on one of these trips there was the young Paul Tsongas on the campaign trail. him and another person walking along the road, chatting up whoever would meet with them. and on the way back, there they were, still plodding on, coats off on a warm spring day. Congress, Senate, a feint at the presidency, now the Tsongas Center in Lowell, as memory. anyway, the scraggly and other virtues of apple trees make them my favourite. if I must choose. the Concord River, spread very wide, looked lovely in the gloaming. then home to the nuclear dog, cat and fish.