fountainpennings

04/13/01 FRI:
---What's this--Friday the 13th? The other notebook went down to the basement with its notes for the intro to Catalog 134, so I'm breaking out this new one instead of bringing the other one back up. The entries are dated so if anyone ever wanted to put all the entries where they belong it would not be a monumental task. A worthless task for sure, but not monumental.
---I've been neglecting my contribution to literature by failing to sit down pen in hand. The mind a seeming blank slate, nothing particularly worth writing about coming readily to mind. There's the everyday I could go on and on about. Packing books. Who cares about that? I'll be doing that for a while this morning. Some people will be glad to get them. Maybe they'll read them, maybe they'll put them on their shelf.
---I'm sure it is of zero interest that I'm picking up the catalog in Ames today. Zero with a big Zee.
---Sitting around here now drinking in the Big Coffee. The birdies of spring issuing their calls. Finally what looks like a nice day. Storms and tornadoes, wind, hail, pouring rain have been the case of late. After a brutal winter. A record for most snow cover for successive days. I regained more than half--closer to two thirds--of my weight loss 'gained' when I started running in earnest a couple years ago. Many days I just didn't feel like going out there this winter--and I really can't blame myself. Even yesterday, for example, I opted not to go out because of the windyness. The day before I ran the regular five-mile route. Just as I was about to take a shower, however, the tornado siren went off. I came down and switched on the TV to see what was going on. Turns out Polk County had a tornado warning in effect. I believe it was the southern part of the county, but things were headed mighty north. So I had to keep watching. I watched the pummeling get closer and closer then figured on how long it would last once it was upon me. Then when it had passed seeing another line of storms that would be here in an hour or so--had to keep an eye on those. All in all, the siren went off maybe three times. The systems did produce a bunch of tornadoes--a few houses were damaged, a couple even obliterated. And two people were killed in a food warehouse. So you know you have to take it serious, be glad it's only an annoyance and time waster for me--this time. Try to feel bad for the people less fortunate, but really, unless I want to get out there and try to do something to help, it doesn't matter how I 'feel'. Indeed, I don't need to even know about the misfortunes of others, if I'm not going to do anything to help them. If all I'm going to do is watch them on the local news crying about their misfortunes, me thinking what it would be like if it were me, then what's the point? It's no different from the commercials coming on for drug remedies for conditions you don't necessarily need to be thinking about at the moment in time when they impel you to think about them. Incontinence, erectile dysfunction, constipation, acid refulx, allergic reactions, heart attacks (aspirin), obesity--not only do they sell you the remedies but they sell you the causes: fast food, soda pop, Olive Garden, local news, national news, stock market reports. Nothing but crap I--for one--don't need to know. People head-onning each other on the highway. Serial bad acters giving the authorities a run for their money. It's enought to make a person foreswear their access to certain information sources.
---Go out as an insular family unit to do something out on the town. I'd rather stary home. I know it's unhealthy to act this way but I'm turning into a case. I am a case. Have been a case. A case history. Clinical trial.