Three things rattling around inside my head

Like everyone (I assume), I find from time to time that certain things have taken root in my head and simply will not go.  Eventually, of course, they tire of the place and move on, but for a while they refuse to budge and stay always just a thought away.

Three such bits are currently in residence, so to encourage them to move along, I'm going to share them with you.

The first is a song I blogged about last week, one I heard in the Delta Rae show and that has stayed with me every day since then, "Run."



The second is a passage from Nick Harkaway's marvelous first novel, The Gone-Away World.  I'm cheating a bit by copying the text from an online source, and I'm hoping the redoubtable Mr. Harkaway won't mind the citation.  (You should buy and read this book if you have not already done so.)

A woman who can eat a real bruschetta is a woman you can love and who can love you. Someone who pushes the thing away because it's messy is never going to cackle at you toothlessly across the living room of your retirement cottage or drag you back from your sixth heart attack by sheer furious affection. Never happen. You need a woman who isn't afraid of a faceful of olive oil for that.

I fell in love with the phrase "sheer furious affection" the moment I read it, and I expect to love it until I die.

My third recent companion is the Count's speech near the end of The Boat That Rocked.  This scene goes beyond that speech, but it's the speech that matters.



There.  With luck, these will all wander into your heads and give mine a break.

On the road again: Bay area, day 1

I am never going to love a day that begins with me getting up at 6:30 a.m., so today had lost my heart before it started.

The rest of the trip went about as well as one could reasonably expect.  I was fortunate enough to get an upgrade for the first flight, and the plane offered WiFi, so that leg of the trip was pleasant and productive.  In DFW, I had time to do more work and also grab some Red Mango; a day that includes Red Mango's delicious berry parfait cannot be all bad.  The second flight was nowhere near as good as the first, but I did have an exit row aisle seat, so I cannot complain but so much.

I can't talk much about work trips, so I'll conclude by mentioning a phrase I read recently, in Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World,  and quite love:  "sheer furious affection."  Something wonderful right there, something powerful and wonderful indeed.  The paragraph surrounding it is almost as lovely.