Journal of a Sabbatical

December 21, 1998

a long day's journey to tweeter

The Newt Gingrich catnip doll is in the kitchen next to Wilbur's food dish.

The light bulb in my office burned out with a loud pop.

Philosophy Larry is correcting exams at Starbucks. I ask him if he always invites pyromaniacs to his parties. He laughs and says it's a miracle she didn't burn the house down. My sentiments exactly.

Do you suppose novelty manufacturers are stuck with huge inventories of Bob Livingston action figures?

I drew Thomas in this year's Christmas gift lottery. (Thomas, you are not reading this.) One of the items on his list was a gift certificate from Tweeter, Etc. I'd been putting that off because I am terrified of malls at this season and I loathe driving in traffic lately. So I figured the closest Tweeter is the one on 114 in Peabody, conveniently located near a Petco so I could get cat food and litter in the same trip. I even had visions of continuing down 114 to the inaccessible Borders (you can only get to it from the westbound side of 114 and Tweeter is on the eastbound side), but I thought that might be pushing it. Just as well. It took the better part of the afternoon just to get to Tweeter with all the holiday shopping traffic. And exactly how tall do you have to be to buy things at Tweeter? The counter is so high, I had trouble getting noticed to get waited on. Do they really need 5-foot high counters? Does Tweeter have illusions of being a bank? Meanwhile, I watched some nature documentary on the dozens of tv screens. Two big screen tvs actually grabbed my attention. I think that's the secret of getting me interested in television -a really, really big high definition screen. I didn't ask how much the huge gems cost.

Checked Petco for Bob Livingston catnip dolls. No luck. No Larry Flynt catnip dolls either. And they've been out of the Clinton ones since the last election. Sigh. Stood for 15 minutes in line holding 10 pounds of kitty litter and 5 pounds of Feline Maintenance Light food. Figured I should get back to weightlifting - doing it in line at Petco seems much more efficient than waiting in line for an hour to do a 23-minute Nautilus workout at the Y.

The light is fading as I finally go on about the other errands for the day. And the errands go on and on and I'm no closer to done than I was this morning. A quick stop at The Stamp Lady yields a few materials for constructing gift tags and bookmarks for the Christmas books.

Back home I realize I've forgotten to get a light bulb for my office. Oops. I spend the rest of the evening wrapping presents by the light of a tiny desk lamp. And the days will get longer tomorrow, but will they get any less surreal?