Miscellany of His Mind

His wife is studying in the other room while listening to the Milwaukee country station.

He finished The Historian last night. He couldn’t set it down once he broke into the last one-hundred pages. The book ended nicely. Not everything fell together, but that is a little more realistic, he thought. Were the preceding 678 pages necessary to achieve the same feeling at the end? He doesn’t think so, but they were entertaining none the less.

He is still unemployed and doing what he can. He told me he is sick of talking about it with people. Just sick. He knows people want to know, but don’t ask him. That is my job. When he has something to report he will tell me and I will relay the information. Got it? Good. Until then let’s talk about books, movies, America’s Dairyland, and Colorado sunsets.

He has never had the library system of a big city at his fingertips. It exhilarates him. Sometimes I have to keep him on task because he searches for books on the online catalog. He found one today. He told me it wasn’t at the nearest library though. I told him to look again. Lo and behold, there is a way to select a book and have it shipped to the nearest library. We discovered that together. We reserved one copy of I Am Legend for pick up at the Oak Creek branch.

Before he reads I Am Legend he needs to finish I’m A Stranger Here Myself, by Bill Bryson. Bryson is one of his favorite authors. This book is a collection of short essays that Bryson wrote upon returning to the United States—his homeland—after a 20-year hiatus in England. Bryson’s sense of humor is so dry and cynical it makes Bryce burst out in laughter in front of anyone and no one. Bryce says it isn’t that long of a book, but he will finish it soon. It is certainly not like The Historian.

He is on a vampire kick. That’s what I Am Legend is about. It is being made into a movie. Will Smith is in it. You might have seen the preview, he says. Smith is left on Manhattan Island. He is the only human. Everyone else is undead. He thinks that Smith fights off the vampires. He doesn’t know. There is an itch to find out, and he will when Oak Creek gets the book in.

His new favorite place to rent movies is the library. They are free, and you get them for a week. He is going to go watch the rest of Mulholland Drive later.

His eyes get dried out by the ceiling fan above him. He ends up blinking a lot. I can tell he is getting annoyed by it. I think we should go now. He is waving goodbye to the computer. Goodbye.