Just Plain Odd

There was nothing exceptional about it. An hour of meditation went fast, but maybe that's because I got there ten minutes late. The guy sitting next to me, whom I met once when I was doing a landscaping gig in Clintonville, couldn't or wouldn't sit still and wore slippers in the shrine room, and there's something furtive about him.

At the tea break, I sat between a guy who told me about his career as a nurse and subsequent health problems due to a fall from a dump truck in his youth, which he recalled in great detail, and a lama from a small town in Colorado, somewhere in the mountains southwest of Boulder. I enjoyed their company, and the mint tea was good too.

I had time to kill before my appointment to give blood, so I went to Half Price Books on Lane Avenue to use up my gift card. As soon as I stepped in the door I saw my old friend Joe from Grandview, and we had a lot of catching up to do. Our sons were friends in elementary school, and Joe and I coached their soccer team -actually Joe coached and I wore the sweatshirt - and now he works at the same store as my daughter. Central Swingstate is a big small town.

When Joe went to lunch, I went to look at dictionaries and realized I had left my glasses in Franklinton. Funny, that's the second time I've done that. I had a spare pair in the car, so I looked at books, and I actually found one to buy, a Descriptionary, or Thematic Dictionary, published by Facts on File. I think it will be useful, or at least fun to peruse, and I love how everything is categorized, like a condensed Dewey Decimal System populated by words but organized by the kinds of things they represent. The TOC is like:

Animals and Insects; Architecture; Art; Clothing; Electronics; Environment; Finance; Food and Drink; Furniture; Human Body and Mind; Language; Law; Magic and the Occult; Medicine; Military; Music; Occupations; Performing Arts and Broadcasting; Physics, Chemistry, and Astronomy; Religions; Sports; Tools; Transportation; Weapons.

How did the Linnaeus-wannabe author, Marc McCutcheon, come up with these categories, of all the possible groupings in the English-language universe? Each section has a number of subcategories, so under Furniture there are Beds; Bureaus, Cabinets, and Chests; Chairs and Sofas; Decorative and Construction Elements; Styles; Tables and Desks. Under Weapons thee are Clubs and Hammers, Daggers, Guns and Bullets, Pole Arms, Swords. Okay. This selection of themes is, shall we say, a little idiosyncratic, and it's clear this is the work not just of a geek, but a certain kind of geek. Maybe there's word for it in the Descriptionary.

I also found three jazz CDs I coveted: a live John Coltrane concert from 1965, Herbie Hancock covers of Joni Mitchell songs, and a Benny Goodman quartet from 1935. I'm not going to analyze my selections; they weren't exactly what I was looking for, but they looked interesting, and it remains to be seen (heard) whether they will "take" - one out of three if I'm lucky.

The total was only slightly more than the gift card, one more reason to return to HPB - you get twice as much stuff - and the whole store is so not Barnes and Noble. I asked the clerk if she could give my daughter a card, like leave it in a cubby in the break room or something, but a second later, there was Zelda walking toward us, so I gave her the card myself. It's just a silly valentine. We stood and talked, and I saw her new haircut, and it looks good.

So far, nothing has gone as planned, but when does anything really? I went to Lowe's on Silver Drive and gave blood at the Red Cross Bloodmobile, and I actually had a conversation with the phlebotomist from Mansfield. He asked what I do, and I told him, and he has concerns about the public schools, not just the academic side but the social environment, which we agreed makes a big difference, so he's working weekends to be able to send his kids to private schools. The time went fast. He took my blood, I took my Lorna Doones and bottled water, and I was on my way.

Luckily I remembered that I'd forgotten my glasses, and people were still there in the meditation hall putting things away, and someone had found and set them aside. In fact, since I seem to have a history of doing this, one of them recognized the case from the last time I left them there, so now I'm the old forgetful guy who keeps losing his old glasses case that's held together with duct tape, dontchaknow.

Satisfied, I went home to drink coffee, which I needed by this time, nothing against the mint tea and bottled water, and read the Sunday paper, which is part of the sabbath after all. Leftover ratatouille was perfect for lunch, you know it's always better the second day, and that was an opportunity to listen to my new CDs. So far it's Benny Goodman by a mile.