a little woolf
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

Prepare yourself for a really nerdy book post.

Has anyone heard of http://www.bookcrossing.com?

It’s received a lot of press lately (albeit in the stuff I read…). Here’s the description from the site:

At BookCrossing, you can register any book you have on the site, and then set the book free to travel the world and find new readers. Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym — anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel next. Track the book’s journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

As you can imagine, the whole idea captivates my imagination. Last week I "registered" and "released" two books into the wild. I left a copy of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf on a bus stop bench in Loma Linda next to the hospital and a copy of On Beauty by Zadie Smith on a bench in the commons at University of Redlands. Obviously I need to work on my creativity…two benches? I can do better than that.

The rub in all of this is no one has actually registered the books that I dropped on the book crossing site. Ah, well. I am going to D.C. for a conference at the end of the month, so maybe the readers there are more enlightened than in Southern California? I could always just leave the book at Missy’s house with entreaties to register the book on the site so I can have the excitement of a book found.

a little zadie smith
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

recline-o-rama
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

Check out our big find of the weekend. Those of you who have visited us in Redlands might remember the Galleria, a colossal, overwhelming antique store (Anna, for example). Telfer and I needed to burn some time on Friday afternoon so we casually stopped by and walked out with this green leather recliner (the recline-o-rama as the 1950s-ish tag announces) for $150. It’s now ensconced in our bedroom. We are both smitten.

And for the bad news. Remember my new year’s resolution of not buying any books in 2008? Totally FAILED on Saturday. Telfer was working and I drove into the Pasadena area to go to Whole Foods and what do you know? A branch of Vroman’s (the best independent bookstore in Southern California) is right next door. I was wandering around, just looking, and then I spotted on the sale table for $3.98, Growing a Reader from Birth: Your Child’s Path from Language to Literacy. And I bought it. Because, you know, if I resisted, our child might never learn to read. And that would be a tragedy.

mydownfall
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

telfer and his new toy
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

We both had Tuesday off this week and so we went into Orange County to the beach and a celebratory lunch at Morton’s for Chief Telfer. We stopped at Room and Board to look at a possible swivel chair candidate and Telfer bought a sock monkey that’s maybe dressed like a bee for the baby (code: for us). He even strapped it in the backseat of our car for the danger-filled journey home.

Telfer can be stoic, not easily excited or demonstrative or chatty about personal details when you don’t know him well, but with me and his close family and friends, he is sweet and kind and yes, very excited about being a dad (does this answer everyone’s questions?).

safety first
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

elizabeth and andrea
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

Although not old enough to pay attention to the the egg timer. All in all, our little eggs boiled for 40 (!) minutes.

diagram of henry’s lookout
Originally uploaded by telfandrea.

(Post from Telfer): Andrea mentioned several posts back the fact that the area she grew up was referred to as the “triangle of death” in a book she read. Well there has developed in the past few months another triangle of death of sorts closer to our current home. Henry has taken to a new “perch” in the backyard. He sits alert at the apex of the triangle from which he can conveniently look out through the fence at the alley and the neighbors cats and can also look out through the fence to the left at passersby in the alley and our nice neighbor hanging laundry on the line. Furthermore he can listen for suspicious disturbances originating from the front of the house and run to either side to investigate (ie. bark). Pretty cute. And don’t worry, this diagram didn’t take me long to draw and no, I don’t have too much free time on my hands.