I took the Prius in for its last free Toyota service this morning. Our Prius is 30 months old and, as of 8:30 this morning, has 13,033 miles on the odometer. All that was required this time was an oil change and a tire rotation, so I took a book with me - a book I borrowed from the free library at my clinic: Mike Mars Flies the X-15 - guessing that it wouldn't require an all-day visit. Toyota of Seattle threw in a free car wash, and had it back to me in about 40 minutes. I'm happy with that.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Friday, July 29, 2005
I never really thought about how much humor is in One Hundred Years of Solitude until I happened upon this guide from Oprah's Book Club, a couple of weeks ago.
I am finding plenty of humor in Living to Tell the Tale, part one of Gabriel García Márquez's autobiography - a book I am enjoying very much. I especially enjoyed the humor, and admired the economy, of the following sentence. (It's referring to the gringo banana company that ruined the town where García Márquez was born, when they arrived and then left. There was much debate among the villagers as to whether the gringos would return or not.)
"The only certainty was that they took everything with them: money, December breezes, the bread knife, thunder at three in the afternoon, the scent of jasmines, love."
There are also some rather oddly structured sentences. (I realize, of course, that the novel is a translation from the original Spanish, but it was translated by Edith Grossman, who translated most - if not all - of García Márquez's works, and I never ran across sentences quite like some in this book.) I had to read the second sentence in the following paragraph three or four times before I could make any sense out of it at all. (The paragraph is referring to the bigotry and violence that erupted when the banana company brought people from all over the world into the tiny village. A crowd murdered an innocent man because he had the wrong accent.)
"Only because of his diction they hacked him to pieces, not taking into account the impossibility of being accurate when there were so many different ways of speaking. Don Rafael Quitero Ortega, the husband of my aunt Wenefrida Márquez and the most boastful and beloved of Cachacos, was about to celebrate his hundredth birthday because my grandfather had locked him in a pantry until tempers had cooled."
(That second sentence makes perfect sense to me now, but it took me a while to figure it out.)
I am finding plenty of humor in Living to Tell the Tale, part one of Gabriel García Márquez's autobiography - a book I am enjoying very much. I especially enjoyed the humor, and admired the economy, of the following sentence. (It's referring to the gringo banana company that ruined the town where García Márquez was born, when they arrived and then left. There was much debate among the villagers as to whether the gringos would return or not.)
"The only certainty was that they took everything with them: money, December breezes, the bread knife, thunder at three in the afternoon, the scent of jasmines, love."
There are also some rather oddly structured sentences. (I realize, of course, that the novel is a translation from the original Spanish, but it was translated by Edith Grossman, who translated most - if not all - of García Márquez's works, and I never ran across sentences quite like some in this book.) I had to read the second sentence in the following paragraph three or four times before I could make any sense out of it at all. (The paragraph is referring to the bigotry and violence that erupted when the banana company brought people from all over the world into the tiny village. A crowd murdered an innocent man because he had the wrong accent.)
"Only because of his diction they hacked him to pieces, not taking into account the impossibility of being accurate when there were so many different ways of speaking. Don Rafael Quitero Ortega, the husband of my aunt Wenefrida Márquez and the most boastful and beloved of Cachacos, was about to celebrate his hundredth birthday because my grandfather had locked him in a pantry until tempers had cooled."
(That second sentence makes perfect sense to me now, but it took me a while to figure it out.)
We did some middle-of-the-night geocaching last night. The idea was to escape the heat of our apartment for a while. I was up until a little past 11:30 logging finds 85,86,87,88, and 89. (Five for Five) This morning, I'm feeling like I could have slept for a couple more hours. I'm wondering if we traded in a poor night's sleep (because of the heat) for a lack of sleep.
Cache number 89 was one of those truly clever hides you run across every once in a while - a visible cache, in plain sight, in a public space, that's difficult to find.
Cache number 89 was one of those truly clever hides you run across every once in a while - a visible cache, in plain sight, in a public space, that's difficult to find.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
With a large population of Spanish-speaking patients, and many bilingual co-workers, in my clinic, I am getting bolder about throwing in a little Spanish myself, here and there. I'm not up to full conversations, yet, and I won't try much without an interpreter. I'm referring to an occasional "De nada" or "El gusto es mio" or "once y media."
Monday, July 25, 2005
I saw Cliff at the bus stop this morning. He seemed amazed that we had never run across each other at the bus stop before - as if he's at the bus stop at that time every morning. Apparently, one of us was either earlier or later than normal. (I looked around and, after seeing all of my fellow 60 riders, determined that it wasn't me.) Cliff certainly is more talkative when it's just him and me.
Phillip and I did some geocaching yesterday afternoon. We started out with a cache in the Madison Park neighborhood that I've been wanted to do for a long time. We found the hiding spot (we knew it was the right spot from the cache name) - but didn't find the cache. The places that it could be hidden were so limited that I'm wondering if the cache has gone missing. (It is possible, of course, that we were looking in the wrong spot, but not likely.) The next cache was nearby, but turned out to be at the beach, and on a day like yesterday, the place was packed with muggles. We looked around a bit - I found a likely hiding place - but didn't bother with a serious hunt, and didn't log a "Did Not Find."
We found the next two caches nearby in The Arboretum. The first one was a large ammo can, and took more searching than the second one, which was a tiny Tupperware container. The heat had gotten to Phillip by the time we got to the second Arboretum cache, and he was ready to call it quits. I could have hunted some more caches, but the heat was getting to me, too. How did I ever survive over 15 summers in New Orleans?
We found the next two caches nearby in The Arboretum. The first one was a large ammo can, and took more searching than the second one, which was a tiny Tupperware container. The heat had gotten to Phillip by the time we got to the second Arboretum cache, and he was ready to call it quits. I could have hunted some more caches, but the heat was getting to me, too. How did I ever survive over 15 summers in New Orleans?
