Sleep makes me feel better. The trip yesterday didn’t go quite as planned, but it was, in general, a good trip. We left Raleigh at ten, as planned, but my grandmother didn’t want to go back to Rocky Mount and the hospital to see her sister, so I didn’t force the issue. It was aContinue reading “Emergency Road Trip IV”
Emergency Road Trip III
I pulled into my driveway precisely at midnight, only to discover that my legs didn’t work quite right. I’m tired. We’ll tell the tale tomorrow after sleep.
Emergency Road Trip II
In an hour my grandmother and I are leaving Raleigh, heading back north to Baltimore. The plan seems to be this–drive to Rocky Mount, pay a visit to Gertrude at the hospital, stay a half an hour tops, then up I-95 to Baltimore. Leave at ten, should arrive in Baltimore somewhere in the vicinity ofContinue reading “Emergency Road Trip II”
Emergency Road Trip
Yesteday I made an emergency trip to Baltimore. Saturday morning my mother called me at work. “What does your Sunday schedule look like?” she wanted to know. Her aunt–my grandmother’s ninety year-old sister–was in the hospital in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She had fallen a few days earlier and broken her hip. Someone needed toContinue reading “Emergency Road Trip”
On 2004 In Review
I saw this on David Henderson‘s LiveJournal, questions aimed at summarizing 2004. What was last year like for me? Let’s run down the list. What did you do in 2004 that you’d never done before?Visit Florida. I’d always wanted to go, and this year the company’s annual managers’ conference was held in Orlando. Did youContinue reading “On 2004 In Review”
December’s Greatest Hits
The top fifteen reasons people checked out allyngibson.com in the month of December. 15. “John Lennon atheist.” I wouldn’t call Lennon an atheist, per se, but he certainly had his issues with organized religion. Witness this quote–“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I am right, and have been proven right. We’re bigger thanContinue reading “December’s Greatest Hits”
Warlords of Utopia
Tuesday I finished Lance Parkin’s Warlords of Utopia, his Faction Paradox novel that recounts the trans-temporal war between the timelines where Rome never fell and the timelines where Germany won the Second World War. Warlords is not a conventional novel. Rather, the book feels like a memoir. The narrator, Marcus Americanus Scriptor, states at theContinue reading “Warlords of Utopia”
Reading Thoughts
I stopped by Barnes & Noble tonight and bought two books. One, The Penultimate Truth, a Philip K. Dick novel. The other, The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby’s new book about, well, buying and reading books. Hornby writes on page 14, “I don’t want anyone writing in to point out that I spend too much moneyContinue reading “Reading Thoughts”
Christmas Eve
Business was quiet, but a busy quiet. No mobs swarmed upon the store. Instead, customers were patient, orderly. Traffic was never overwhelming, but in the final analysis sales were solid, better than I anticipated. As with every Christmas Eve traffic fell off in the afternoon as people left to travel, to wrap, to cook–the pauseContinue reading “Christmas Eve”
Narnia
Curiously, apropos of nothing, this came up at work today, in what order should C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books be read? I said, “Publication order–The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe comes first.” My coworker took a different view–in her boxed set The Magician’s Nephew comes first. Oh, the pain! Some may find it curious that,Continue reading “Narnia”