"Home, Home On The Raaaaange..."

I ’m back from vacation, if you were wondering. Ah heck, you probably weren’t. It was wonderful, thanks for asking. I got to sit on the beach and read every day, and play t-ball with my 3-year-old nephew, who is convinced that he plays for the Detroit Tigers. I got to see my wife-to-be every day. It feels crazy to call her that. Crazy awesome. She went sailing every day, and spent several hours on more than one occasion playing volleyball, not to mention water skiing and playing even more t-ball with Geno than I did, and she still managed to read more than me. She’s a very fast reader, and I’m a very slow one, but still. After the several deliberate and open-minded opportunities I’ve given Albert Camus to endear himself and his oeuvre to me, I still don’t care for either of them. Sorry Albert, wherever you are. I disliked l’Étranger so much that the day after I finished it I went out and bought two books, the first (The Scarlet Letter) so that I’d have something to read for the rest of the week, and the second (a one-volume compilation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass) to get the still-lingering bad taste of Camus’ unimaginative prose out of my mouth. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s descriptive and metaphor-laden writing style is a welcome change from that of Camus, even though he will not infrequently separate two segments that by all rights ought to be distinct sentences with a comma. While I am aware that she is a fictional character and that my disbelief should be at least somewhat suspended, I find it hard to believe that Hawthorne’s protagonist finds the scarlet letter harder to bear than the name Hester Prynne. Shame on her sainted, fictional parents. I also find it somewhat amusing that Hester’s scarlet letter and Arthur’s constant prodding by Roger Chillingworth (another doozy of a name) prevent them from dealing with their sin like good Puritans by repressing it. Silly Puritans. Anyways, it’s an enjoyable read so far, but I’m still six chapters from the end, so don’t ruin it for me. Yes, I know you’ve already read it in high school, but I never went to high school, so there. I’ll probably finish it tonight. Softball was great fun yesterday, after a week-long hiatus. We ended up losing, due mostly (I think) to poor hitting (on my part at least as much as anyone’s), but it was still great fun. I’m a terrible, terrible hitter. I hit weak fielder’s choice grounders in every at-bat. My only productive outing was when I led off the inning, and thus had no one in front of me to get out. It’s weird for me to find myself getting worked up about a sport. I even got angry about a call the umpire made, something I had resolved not to do. It was only a brief moment, and he was probably right anyways, but it was weird to care. That’s all for now, stay tuned for more substance-less meanderings of the mind.