09 Mar 2010

R: On the way to Strand to pick up books on financial investments, I saw something that seemed both natural and out of place. Passing through a street with nearly no traffic - pedestrian or vehicular - I found a beaten up chair out on the curb under a street light. It was as if it had just sprung up out of the concrete much like the street lamp and the surrounding buildings. It actually blended into the scenery quite well, but what I found odd was it's placement and singularity. There it was sitting all by its lonesome in the middle of the sidewalk.

I decided to capture it from the other side of the street on my way back, but sometimes things just don't turn out as planned.

It started inside the bookstore, where my mission was to educate myself on mutual funds, stocks, bonds, equity, etc. BK recommended a book by Suze Orman called Women & Money that covers the basics in easy to understand terms. But as always the shelves of fiction sang out to me, and I got sidetracked into picking up Jane Austen's Emma, which I naturally had to counterbalance with Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Then Hemingway caught my eye as I am on a classics kick - currently plowing my way through Les Miserables for the third time - but settled for Catch-22. I'm wary of Ernesto for now; I crave a little more suspense and movement than he offers in that beautiful purple prose. He's on the library list until my mood changes.

I really wanted Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace, but I was unwilling to pay the $12 for a new book and couldn't find a used one (other books were $7 each). He's also on the library list.

After my little spree upstairs, I decided to head into the netherworld to see about selling my soul. It is a dysmal place, the basement of Strand, but I need information dammit! Too bad it has to come in a glossy how-to, Oprah-approved, self-enhancement hardcover. I just couldn't get myself to do it. I was surrounded by Mind Over Money, Get a Financial Life, Financial Strategies for Today's Widow, and The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke. Yet I couldn't pick up the most mildly titled manual on the shelf. It was too much. I had to leave.

Clutching my precious treasures from the English literary canon, I practically ran home...until I remembered my chair. Turning back down the block, I saw to my horror, a dump truck pull up to the curb and watched as a man in a neon vest uprooted the urban stump. Oh tragedy!

I walked the rest of the way home crestfallen at wasting so much time worrying about Suze Orman and her goddamn women and their goddamn money. Just as I was cursing Suze and her ugly Kate Gosselin-esque haircut, I found this strange contraption followed by a second white one on the same block. It's not my lonely watchman under the street lamp, but this fellow is so cheerful and ridiculous it almost makes up for the loss. Who actually rides these things?

C: Someone brought two boxes of Girl Scouts Cookies to the office (and a sleeve of Thin Mints came later in the afternoon). I almost forgot it was GS season, and now I am on a mission to find at least 5 boxes of Samoas (a.k.a. "Caramel DeLites"...I reject the name change) before they stop selling this upcoming Monday. Of course, the Boston office is in Back Bay - which really isn't far unless you are relying on the T (I do) - and they're only selling cookies on weekdays between 10AM and 4PM.

Gah. This was so much easier when I lived in a house full of daisies, brownies and junior scouts.