Saturday Slight

Two more inches of snow overnight on top of a new layer created through a full day's worth of snow yesterday. That accumulation has created a magical scene outside with trees limbs weighted down with puffy white pillows and a horizon appearing like a vast table of marshmallow cream.

It's pretty for photographers and skiers but getting to be downright ugly for folks who have to plow the driveways and figure out where to pile it up one more time. The forecast calls for another three or four inches today, followed by lighter doses and eventually a clear day on Wednesday. Even though it creates a lot of work, I'll take this over yucky slush any day.

It's a ZAGS day today. Last year at this time, we were in Seattle for the Battle in Seattle. We watched the Zags lose to Nevada, but we had fun anyway. I got to see my classmates Janet and Rick, and I'm betting they'll be in Key Arena again today. We'll watch the game from the Lovestead living room.

This is also River Journal Christmas party day. Trish is hosting her crew with Italian cuisine at the Ponderay Cafe in the Bonner Mall. In keeping with tradition, we're supposed to bring our gag gifts. I've got a problem. I have not received any new AOL CD's this year. That's been my customary gift in the past, and people have been rightfully disappointed to open it.

So, I guess I'll have to do some searching to find something equally bad. There are a few re-gifting things I could do, but not remembering who gave me these items could prove embarrassing, so I'll probably avoid that ploy. Maybe it's time to start digging through those dozens of boxes that have sat unopened in our storage rooms since we move here. Certainly, there's something.

Speaking of gifts, this was a booky Christmas. Bill has two new Patrick McManus books, as does Willie. We have Boots' BEANS book on display atop the bookcase. Bill gave me Tom Brokaw's new book Boom.

I've heard Tom Brokaw speak of this on several interview programs and have been continually amazed at the knowledge this man has amassed over his years in the media. For a guy who got told to take a break from college and come back when he was ready, he certainly made up for lost time and exemplifies the "average guy" success syndrome just like David Letterman. I'm looking forward to reading his take on our Boomerdum.

I gave myself, my mother, my siblings and my kids each a copy of the beautifully-produced St. Joseph's Centennial Cookbook. Fr. T.J. O'Donovan and the cookbook coordinator Carol Kamp autographed each, and the book will be especially treasured by all of us forever because Mother's painting of St. Joseph's is on the cover.

My friend Margarete gave me The Best Things Anybody Ever Said, and I've been looking them over. It's a big thick book so there are a lot of best things said. From time to time, I'll use it to lead off some blog entries. Margarete loves language like I do, and I'm still planning to draw from the two books she gave me for my birthday: Ballyhoo Buckaroo and Spuds (Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins) and Movers and Shakers: A Chronology of Words That Shaped Our Age.

Those go in the pile with Richard Lederer's Presidential Trivia, sent to me by my cousin in California who's well acquainted with this prolific author of English language idiosyncrasies. I've dabbled in the book from time to time, and, yes, I did find some stuff about Hillary. Maybe that's why I haven't looked at it for a while.

The book I need to finish before starting all the aforementioned is Ivan Doig's The Whistling Season. Of course, there's a funny story to go along with that one. I was on a flight to Idaho Falls last month when a man who should have taken up two seats was assigned to sit next to me. Well, he sat on top of me---all the way from Seattle to the Idaho border when the plane had reached an altitude where it was okay to get up to use the restroom.

I pried myself out of the seat, met the attendant eye-to-eye and asked if I could please move to the empty seat a few rows in front of me. Up until that time, the lady across the aisle seemed to be the only person on that plane aware that I might be in some misery. So, we talked, got acquainted and she sympathized, which made my suffering, smothered body feel a bit better.

The lady, who'd flown up from California, got off at Bozeman but took my same flight back to Seattle two days later. On that trip, she enthusiastically suggested The Whistling Season, which I obligingly purchased in Seattle Airport. I agree with her assessment that it's a book you wish would go on forever. Being a person who loves stories of a past times in ranch settings, especially in Montana, I'm hooked.

I read a few pages several times a week whenever I wake up in the middle of the night. At this point, the one-room school house teacher has run off to who-knows-where with the local preacher. So, the learned brother of the family's housekeeper from the East has taken over the classroom and is in the process of learning students' names, along with a little philosophizing.

It's a wonderful book, and I keep thinking that if that big man hadn't sat on me in that airplane seat, I may have passed it by in favor of some other book. So, I continue to read about the whistling housekeeper who can't cook for the widower and father of three boys who wishes she could, and I'm glad for the tip.

And the other books will sit in a pile like the deep snow awaiting their turn. If luck holds, maybe I'll dig into each and give them a little use before the snow disappears in the spring.

GO ZAGS!!! Happy Saturday to all.