5.7.01

back from prom night in iowa, trying to get this garrish red nail polish off of my toes. about once a year i put nail polish on, and then promptly remember why it is that i never wear it. every time i look down it’s like my toes are bleeding. the things we do in the name of beauty.

aside from prom, the weekend was filled with rain and book-buying and a spontaneous trip to grinnell, iowa. shopping trips through the used bookstore, the new-yet-independant book store, and paul’s own lending-library resulted in a nice, heavy stack of new books for me. the summer reading list now contains:

Love in the Time of Cholera -Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius -Dave Eggars
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle -Haruki Murakami
A Room of One’s Own -Virginia Wolf
To the Lighthouse -Virigina Wolf
Sophie’s World -Jostein Gaarder
Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence -Nick Bantock
Galileo’s Daughter -Dava Sobel

naturally, at the time it made sense to acquire all these books in iowa city. later, when i had to carry them all on the plane, it made less sense. i’m particularly pleased about the discovery of the griffin & sabine book – i absolutely adore nick bantock’s books, but usually they are prohibitively expensive. it was half off at the used book store and in nearly-perfect condition. the dedication scribbled into the front page reads, “thank you, lara, for being such a fantastic friend. you have my love, if not my vision, forever. merry x-mas, 1994 -matt”. i feel kinda bad for matt that lara went and sold his christmas present. maybe because he drew little round circles above each of his i’s, and his handwriting was definately girly. and what does it mean that she has his vision forever? did he give her one of his eyes?