a little randomness

If we didn’t have Horrid Dial Up I’d be posting some pictures of the lovely Oz, as today was the Oz Festival, a highlight of each year. And this was the first one with the digital camera. And I took, ummm… something like 200 pictures. I can NOT figure out how I do that. I’m deleting quite a few. I think I’m finally getting the hang of "delete". Anyhow, if I could get them on Flickr I’d post some, but I can forget that. I can also forget doing much noting. Tomorrow may be Coffee Shop/Wireless Day.

It was fun, as always, although FREEZING. And it was a little unusual, too, because we went through with friends. Well, with Kim and two of her friends, who all came up from Asheville and met us up there. One friend had wanted to go to the festival for years, since she’d visited Oz many times as a child, and the other friend really didn’t want to go as she wasn’t the least bit interested in Oz, but went anyhow because the first friend was dying to go. And this was the first year they didn’t have conflicting plans. So they came up with Kim, and naturally it was horribly cold and fogged in so you couldn’t see the breathtaking views. And they waited for an HOUR to ride the bus up, because the one who didn’t want to go has had to have surgery and radiation fairly recently and didn’t feel up to the hike up the mountain. I think they all had a pretty good time, though, even the one who didn’t want to go to begin with. I hope. WE had fun. Baker B and I actually went BACK up after we drove down the mountain and had lunch with them before they left. And went through again.  And walked up the mountain again, AND back down, after walking through the park three times. I am totally exhausted.

I’m too tired to think of anything interesting to say, so I’ll do the tag I’ve just had from Dragonlady. And seen on several other diaries already tonight:

1) Grab the nearest book.
2) Open the book to page 123.
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5) Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet. Just pick up the whatever is closest.
6) Tag five people.

"Spyglass Magazine."

The bad weather lightens a little. "Shouldn’t  you be writing about the latest adventures of Barbra Streisand’s nose?" says the Native American, ading a sardonic, "No disrespect. "

"Well, sorry I’m not the Herald Tribune, but why not give me a chance? You could use a little positive coverage, unless you’re seriously planning to dismantle that atomic time bomb across the water by waving placards and strumming protest songs."

This is from Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. It is a GREAT book. I recommend it highly. It’s also taken me months to read. Although I think part of that is because I hate to finish it. It’s a very strangely constructed book. It’s made up of a number of seemingly completely unrelated stories, starting with journals written by a man in the late 1800s who is trying to sail to San Francisco from New Zealand but has gotten temporarily stranded on an island in the South Pacific while his ship is being repaired – then to a series of letters by a young music student in the 1930s who has quit school and gone off to Brugge to find a reclusive composer he admires – on to a journalist in the 40s who is trying to solve the murder of a nuclear engineer she got stranded with in an elevator (that’s what my five sentences is from) – on to a somewhat present-day story of an elderly man who is put into a nursing home against his will – then into the future, to a world full of clones and run by corporations, and then even further into the future where some sort of horrible disaster has happened…. Each story is interrupted by the next story, until you get to the quite long middle story, which is the farthest in the future and all in one piece – and then he starts going backwards and finishes each story up. And the more you read, the more you see the stories are actually all entwined. He’s a great writer – every story is in a very different style, and yet they all work together and it’s like a fascinating maze. I’d never heard of him until I read something about  his latest – Black Swan Green –  and went to the bookstore looking for it, but Cloud Atlas was the only thing they had by him. So now I must read the rest of them. Whatever I read compared him to Philip Dick, the odd, surreal SciFi writer, and it’s a good comparison.   

I’m nearly falling asleep on the couch – probably obvious by how little sense I’m sure I’m making – so maybe I better see if I have any luck posting this.

Oh, the tags – I tag anyone who wants to do it!