Journal of a Sabbatical

June 15, 1999

snippets

Today's Starting Pitcher: Pedro Martinez

Reading: Before the Dawn by Shimazaki Toson, The Storm Petrel and the Owl of Athena by Louis J. Halle, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

Overheard at The Algiers Coffeehouse:

I haven't seen you in a decade!

I've had three children since then.

Wow! That's productive.

Overheard on Brattle Street:

If it was a course it wouldn't be at Harvard.

I seem to have lost my phone bill. I have the payment envelope and the inserts telling me all the extra services I need to have to keep up with life at the end of the 20th century, but no bill. Guess I'll have to call them to find out how much I owe them.

The Red Sox won tonight. Maybe they're shaking off the slump they got into on that inter league road trip. But with Tom Gordon on the disabled list with an inflammation of the ulnar nerve - following baseball is a great way to learn anatomy - they've got Tim Wakefield as the closer. A knuckle ball closer. That ought to make for some really exciting ninth innings.

The spell checker thinks Pushkin should be Pushpin and Onegin should be Oregon. I like that: Eugene Oregon by Pushpin. I picked up a copy of Eugene Onegin at the Harvard Coop this afternoon. Not the highly publicized new Douglas Hofstadter translation, but the Charles Johnston translation in the Everyman series - ugly little green books with great poetry inside. I read pages and pages and pages of it over falafel and Algiers special mint tea. Worth the drive into Cambridge even though I got stuck in traffic and missed the 4:00 PM show of The Apple, an Iranian film I've been wanting to see. I'm sure it'll come round to the art houses again.

I tried to write a sonnet for tonight's entry but I can't write iambic pentameter with the Red Sox on the radio and Wilbur on my shoulder.

My right hand and shoulder are exhibiting all my favorite RSI symptoms: pain and numbness in a variety of places. I think this is partly overuse of the computer and partly my endless struggle against the evil bittersweet vine. Garden tools are not designed to be used by human hands, backs, and necks are they? Even the "ergonomic" rake I bought was clearly designed for a person at least 6 feet tall with lower back problems.

No progress on pounding in the edging or putting weed mat in the cracks and along the borders today.

It feels like it's going to rain.