July 14, 1999

This morning I drove Dom to the doctor's office down at Loyola Medical Center just north of Brookfield, home of the zoo. Aside from the odd McDonalds where we got coffee, it was pretty uneventful until I missed a turn on my way back, But thanks to Dom's extraordinary geographical acumen, we carved a path back home without losing much time.

Once home, I finished bookshelf assembly - oh, yes, I've got bookshelves,,,the biggest and cheapest I could find at OfficeMax. In their boxes these suckers are exceptionally heavy. I have six. I carried one upstairs by myself and reconsidered. Luckily, Dom had a strong young man assembling our new gas grill - so this lucky fella got volunteered to help me out. All in all, the carrying and thge assembling was a good workout, judging from my sore shoulders and arms.

On looking into The Closet's guestbook, I noticed a visit from Taku Ashu, who turns out to be a 25-year old Cameroonian studying computer science somewhere in Germany. I wrote him to ask how he had managed to land in my Closet, but I haven't heard back yet. He is my first African/European visitor. Cameroon is a West African nation of about 15 million people. 80% speak French; 20% speak English. I just visited tehCameroon news site, and it's clear that French is the majority language. the Englksh version is very sparse in contrast to the French. And, hey, it's Bastille Day (I type over the strains of Charpentier's La Descente D'Orphée aux Enfers.)

Seen while jogging: this big broken cloud settles down in front of the falling sun. It's picture-book time. Fingers of light and shadow shoot up into the blue.

And something else: two moms walking the track with two kids (one maybe 4, the other 3). The older one would plant himself in my lane and then jump out at the last minute as I approached. Pretty soon the younger one was doing the same. A Holdenesque moment. Kids turn everything into a serious game.