True Note

Jean, Kelly and I went out to celebrate our anniversary. Jean's parents had sent us $50 to note the occasion, and after much debate we agreed to split the dough and go to the bookstore!

This really captures one facet of our relationship so well. Jean and I met at a bookstore (we both worked there), we have both been avid readers for all that time, and our tastes overlap and diverge like melody and harmony!

So Jean told Kelly she could have some of the money too. "How much?" Jean said $10. "How much are you getting?" Jean told her that Daddy and Mommy were getting $20 each. "That's not fair." It's our anniversary, Kelly...

How did Kelly spend her loot at the bookstore? She bought a Ty plush puppy for $6, and talked us out of an extra buck to get a packet of Yu-Gi-Oh cards at the register. She waffled over whether to get a book or the puppy, and she and I had a long and involved discussion of the utility of each. Turns out you can only read the book once (!) and you can play with the plush puppy many times. I pointed out that she could use the book as a doorstop too, but that didn't tip the scales.

Jean got a pocket nursing reference for her classes this Fall, then used her own money to buy another book she'd had her eye on for quite some time: Fluids & Electrolytes Made Incredibly Easy! Well, with a title like that, you can understand her enthusiasm!

I had amassed a pile of books from the computer, science and sociology sections of the store, and winnowed my pile down to two: The Best American Science Writing 2003, edited by Oliver Sacks, and Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, by Bruce Schneier. I really couldn't decide, and Kelly said to me in a quite serious voice, "Dad, which one do you think you'll get the most out of?"

She worked it out with me, and I ended up getting the Schneier book. But I did look up the Sacks book once we got home, and have it on request from the library. In the meantime, Ring is turning out to be a rather good book, and a bit more subtle than the movie (the American one being all I've seen). It's sort of horror, sort of detective story, with offbeat characterization and a new twist on the classic campfire ghost story. I just breached the halfway point, and hope I can finish it before renewal comes around, as the library often says I can renew, then refuses to when I try (via the web). It's sorta "Psych! We really had someone else waiting in line to be next all this time, but we didn't tell you!"