Sunday Sundries, 197

1. AOTW: This is a group award this week--an acknowledgement that AH-ery is often a team effort. The award this week goes to all drivers who make me hit the brakes--not for an emergency (I forgive! I forgive!) but for the sake of convenience (their convenience): They want to turn left as they approach me--and can't wait; they want to pull out onto the highway from a parking lot--and can't wait; they want to ... you know. So, all you (millions of?) AOTW winners this week: Your check is in the mail.

2. I didn't finish any books this week--except for the book I reviewed for Kirkus (and I ain't allowed to say what that is: Kirkus reviewers are listed in front of the publication, but all reviews are anonymous).

I have a good excuse, though: I had cataract surgery on my right eye on Tuesday (it seems to have gone well); left eye will be a week from this coming Tuesday. So ... I am now in that "transition" phase: My glasses are no longer quite right; my glasses-less sight is no longer quite right. So all of you are looking quite well to me, I'd say--a bit fuzzy but well.

I remember nothing of the surgery but some flashing lights--some voices (no words I recognized). Whatever the drug was, it knocked me out for a whole day--lots of good naps. But I had no pain, no discomfort. I have to wear sunglasses outside for a week, but, as I told my friend Chris at the coffee shop the other day, I think I look a lot like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

3. Speaking of Tom Cruise ... Joyce and I went over to Kent to see the latest Mission Impossible (nukes, evil guys, fast-moving transpo, remote locations, last-second heroics ... you know). The Kent Cinemas, by the way, are remodeling, and we sat in one of the remodeled spaces, using recliners to watch the film--a bit soporific, I fear (the chairs, not the film, which hardly ever stopped to allow characters to eat, drink, sleep, visit the outhouse, breathe). And my legs went to sleep. (I told you it was soporific!)

Anyway, I like seeing films based on old TV shows I used to watch. When the theme music starts, I get a little ... nostalgic (okay, lachrymose). Evanescent youth and all ... (Link to film trailer.) Speaking of "evanescent youth": Tom Cruise. A little long-in-the-tooth to be hanging from helicopters and martial-artsing guys near alpine cliffs? (Not that I couldn't do such things, you know!)

4. I had a great time at the coffee shop on Friday morning this week. A long conversation with Susan Peterson, whom I taught in 8th grade during the 1995-96 school year over at Harmon Middle School in Aurora--the last full year before I retired (which occurred in January 1997). Susan was an outstanding student--gifted in many ways (she was in the last play I directed in the spring of 1996--my final 8th Grade Farewell-to-Harmon Show)--and she continues to perform in Austin where she now lives with her husband and 1.5-yr.-old daughter.

She is looking to come back into the area (her parents still live in Aurora) and is looking for a good MFA program. She's back "into" writing (another of her many gifts), and I am thrilled for her. And, oh, the stories she has to tell! She's been all over the place, all over the planet ...

Naturally, neither of us took a picture ... it's so, you know, inconvenient these days ... Grrrrr.


5. We've started streaming a new series (via Acorn), Hidden, which I read about in the New York Times a week or so ago. Wales. Cops. Darkness. You know ... link to some video. Link to NYT piece about it.

6. A little sadness in the Dyer household this week. Tomorrow--if things had gone well--we would have left for Stratford, Ontario, for our annual week of play-bingeing--eleven plays in six days was our custom. We've gone up every summer (the first week of August) since 2001, but this year? Health and uncertainty, uncertainty and health. You have to book a bit in advance (room, tix), and when I usually book (November), I just couldn't pull the trigger. And it's a good thing I didn't. The next few weeks I have have more eye surgery, bone scans at Seidman Cancer Center, oral surgery ... and Joyce has a pile of things, as well.

So ... when August is gone (and if no other problems arise), we may go down to Staunton, VA, for a few days to see some Shakespeare at the American Shakespeare Center there; it's awesome--the theater space is a replica of Blackfriars (though somewhat smaller), the indoor venue the Bard and his company used in London.

We loved our weeks in Stratford ... but ... sigh ...


7. Last word: a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from dictionary.com

hypnopedia [hip-nuh-pee-dee-uh] noun

1. sleep learning.

QUOTES: Years of intensive hypnopaedia and, from twelve to seventeen, Malthusian drill three times a week had made the taking of these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as blinking.

-- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932

ORIGIN: Hypnopedia is first recorded in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World (1932), and the word may well be a coinage of his. Hypnopedia is a compound word formed from the Greek nouns hýpnos “sleep” and paideía “child-rearing, education.” Hýpnos is a regular Greek development of the Proto-Indo-European noun sup-nos, from the root swep, swop-, sup- “to sleep.” In preclassical Latin the noun swep-nos becomes swop-nos and finally somnus in classical Latin. The Germanic equivalent root, swef-no-, becomes swefen “sleep, dream” in Old English and sweven in Middle English, e.g., in Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Paideía is a derivative of the noun país (stem paid-) “child.”