17 May 04
Back From the Desert
DocRoc and I left the Doc’s mother’s house this morning at 5:20 and drove for far too long into a headwind and a traffic jam. I did just catch my plane, running to the gate in my stocking feet (“do I have time to run to the bathroom [my tea was catching up with me]?” “I don’t know how long you need,” as I hopped from foot to foot…). Through some fluke of carelessness on both our parts, I left the Doc’s with no reading material, and some inconsiderate person had finished the crossword in the in-flight magazine, so I had to play scrabble with my PDA (it ALWAYS thrashes me) for an hour as I flew north to Sacramento.
What stays with me: the sound of a pair of ash-throated flycatchers from this blooming smoketree (Psorothamnus spinosus) at 7:45 am; the booming bass of Peter Gomes’ audiofed voice as he announced yesterday morning on Harvard radio, from Harvard Memorial Church, that he’d be performing a wedding today: that of two men, the State of Massachusetts having legalized gay marriage (I burst into tears); the Doc’s irritation with poorly finished hems as she set one of mine to rights; her ministrations to my utterly unreasonable tea needs in the wee hours; the realization that having a girlfriend like this is a blessing many people never get.
Who, for example, could you give a pedicure to and they’d give you one back? (This is not something men often experience, I think.) Or put up with questions like “What exactly did you write your dissertation on?” at six in the morning, after she had answered this same question probably eight times previously?
(Thanks Doc.)
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What sort of PDA do you have and do you think PDAs are a real alternative to the ease of paper? You should be a good person to ask given your love of paper. I have never given up my leather diary bought in Cordoba. I like the idea of games though but is the Scrabble “fixed”?
I still love talking about my dissertationand can do it in my sleep, as you noteeven though it’s colder than whatever’s in Grant’s Tomb. We ARE to be reprimanded, however, for letting you flutter off with no reading material! Totally aberrant, can’t explain it-except maybe that we left from Mom’s, where there IS nothing to read?