Remember the Harper Index? Here’s mine.
Hours of sleep last night: Six
Number of times I awakened from said sleep: Six
Hours of sleep previous night: Five
Number of times I awakened for said sleep: Six
Hours of travel today: Six
Hours between breakfast and next actual meal: 12.5
Glares glared at man in Chili’s who attempted to engage me in conversation about my reading, which happened to be Olive Kitteridge, and prompted this observation from him “Maine is really small. It’s about the size of Las Cruces, New Mexico.”: Three
Days on this leg of tour: Five
Events: Six
Flights: Seven
Total hours to be spent in El Paso, assuming plane departs on time: Twenty
I suggest trying UNISOM, the traveling sales manager’s pal.
LS had a good review today in THE COLUMBUS DISTRESS, er, I mean THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH. But their top twenty list merged fiction with non. I have not seen that before. Strange, in a print restricted way.
Have a puffy Taco for me.
Thanks for the tip, Kevin. I tend to forget there are pharmaceutical solutions.
The three “Glares” for the man at Chili’s caught my attention.
What is it about reading in a restaurant that compels (or ‘warrants’ – in their opinion!) a certain sort of person to try and start up a conversation?
Is it because the reader is eating alone? I confess that I rarely ever eat alone at a place with glass plates and steel forks, and that a lone diner would catch my eye….but how would that excuse bothering that person?
Aside from that – about ONE glare from the author of Dear Penthouse would be enough to dissuade me, if I was enough of a clod to pester her in the first place!
W1.
Not a number, really. But it is the page number of an article in Saturday’s WSJ,”Lost In Fiction,” which has “Alexander McCall Smith on the intense personal relationships readers form with the characters and the ways that complicates the lives of authors.” Granted, the Glaree was not necessarily a fan (I hope not)but I thought the article somewhat timely, regardless. Mr. Smith opens the piece with the things that are said to him at signings, and I found myself wondering if these are some of the remarks that Laura may get (and thus the genesis for remarks to ‘pickers of nits’ and so on in some Author’s Notes).
While I suspect that at least half of the questions you field are repeats, are many of them really annoyed with how you have handled a text? And do you remember those?
//karen
Tylenol, Excedrine, and Advil PM’s all gave me hangovers, which UNISOM does not leave me with. There is nothing worse (well almost nothing) than waking up in a lonely hotel room at 3am and not being able to go back to sleep.
The Texas Cousin, visiting his Maine Cousin, said “Well, cousin, how big is yore propity?”
The Maine Cousin said” Well, you follow the stone wall to the Big Oak, turn right to the old stone silo, and then follow the creek back to here.”
The Texas cousin replied, “back home, I can get in my car and drive for HALF A DAY and not see the end of my propity.”
The Maine cousin replied, “Ayuh, we used to have a car like that.”
With apologies to Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good book must be in want of conversation.
I don’t know where you were for Glarefest 2009, but the non sequitur was priceless. The wearing of headphones connected to nothing does wonders to dissuade conversation (one would think the book would be enough, but, nooooo…. ) I normally traveled a lot for work, and I discovered that gem by accident. People assume you are listening to something whether you are or not, so if you can keep a poker face, they either have to touch you or snap their fingers in your field of vision in order to think that they can be ‘noticed’ over your ‘music,’ either of which might provoke a justifiably unpleasant response if something is not ablaze.
As for OTC meds, Tylenol PM works for a lot of folks. But you don’t complain of trouble with onset, you complain of sleep interruption. That’s an awful lot of times to wake up in the night if you don’t have a body part in pain. I hope it goes away; that is thoroughly annoying. Clearly copious wine is indicated.
//kjl