Today was the annual general meeting of the Friends of the Library, and whaddaya know, we bid on some books. There was nothing I'd have fought for, but there were very few people and nobody else wanted the books I wanted, so we got them all. Gloat.

• QPB ILLUSTRATED TREASURY OF FAIRY TALES. This one is gorgeous and will end up at a granddaughters' house in a few years.
• HOW TO DUNK A DOUGHNUT, THE SCIENCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE. Len Fisher. It looks like fun. Long ago I gave Rich the science book about a strapless bra, and this looks similar.
• Bob Tarte, ENSLAVED BY DUCKS. This one may be funny.
• PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE AND OTHER PLAYS, Steve Martin. This one will certainly be funny. I never much liked Martin's slapstick, but when he takes on the classics and is a little more subtle, I think he's hilarious. Besides, we knew him when. At least, we SAW him when, when he was working at Knott's Berry Farm doing the olio for the mellerdrammer.
• Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley, WITNESS TO AMERICA. A coffee-table book, huge, with a CD of important sounds. (I assume the Hindenburg, the Day of Infamy, the Eagle has Landed.)
• GHOST TOWNS OF THE PACIFIC FRONTIER, Lambert Florin. Rich picked out this one, but I have no objections whatsoever.
• Richard Miniter, LOSING BIN LADEN. I didn't want the Howard Dean book, though, go figure.
• Noah Adams, THE FLYERS. This is about the Wrights.
• READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN, Azar Nafisi. This one looks really interesting!

Mind you, I'm currently reading a book I read last January. I didn't remember the plot at all, but some of the incidental stuff and one character seemed familiar. Obviously, if I had only 12 books, I could read them over and over and over, and would never need any more.

On Books.

Then we didn't come home to gloat immediately, but walked around downtown picking up loose ends of caches. We tried to start one multi, but apparently we were on the wrong side of the street. We walked to all the landmarks for the videocam cache. We finally found the one near the big blue light streak that is the refurbished Esquire theater. I forgot to put in the coordinates for the multi in the downtown mall, but it was too busy to look anyway. And we forgot to stop by our cache at the parking garage to replace the logbook. Then on the way home we stopped at Marshall Park. Last time it was hot, there were homeless, somebody'd been visiting a tree for a bathroom, and Rich was really narky about the GPSr. This was much better, and we discovered it was the Cat who lives across the street (one of the questions.) We finally have that one off our front page. Actually, a new cache-hider has been putting out so many our front page has changed a lot this week. We're 17 short of the pace to get 1000 in a year, since it should be 750 today.

On Fox News Sunday today, Kerry was almost likable, and at least he doesn't say "we" on his innumerable flip-flops. He will say anything to be elected, and he would ask permission from our enemies to protect ourselves.

Mighod. Is it the Rapture? Clinton actually speaks the truth. They comment in the Corner, too.

There's always Weasel Clark. MSNBC.

Apparently Wesley Clark preferred to take orders from our allies than from Americans. There may be a more serious charge that could be leveled against a general wearing our uniform, but I have trouble imagining it.

For balance, I read one of the journals I used to follow more regularly. She comes across as a total loon. The bad guys want to kill her children, and she goes all paranoid about the good guys instead. There are a lot of things going on that I don't like, but it's the terrorists, stupid!

ObGoe: they want to completely rebuild campus. I have already been surprised that the "temporary" buildings, usually an oxymoron, have been replaced. Gerth, the former President, and one of GoE's travails, changed a lot of things. What I would like, though, is to have the buildings renamed for their functions, so the science building or the engineering building or the education building don't sound like dorms (Placer Hall, Shasta Hall, etc.)