One of the first things I did this morning was to make a small, but much-needed adjustment to my homepage. The Amazon button I’ve created for myself was always placing itself at the bottom of the page, and I wanted it to appear just under my Top Ten. It took a little while to see what was going on with the code, but I finally got it nailed down. It’s extremely satisfying to correct something like this when you’ve thinking about it and looking at it for months.
Mary and I hit the Goodwill again this morning. With a little help from yours truly, she made out with a fantastic gym/workout bag. Of course, this is nothing in comparison to the four graphic design books she found for my collection. The coolest score was picking up an unopened copy of eMedia’s “Guitar Method 1″ for a paltry $4.99. (I’ve seen this for years, but have never bought it. I just couldn’t resist.)
I think the coolest highlight of my day is the one that came from sorting out the rather formidable stack of miscellaneous papers which I’d collected on my desk and floor. Among these papers were a number of Things To Do lists. Ryan Casey’s name made another appearance.
Ryan Casey used to be a cook over at the Old Pequliar. He’s a young man of thoughtful wit and kind heart, with whom I identify a certain sense of metaphysical kinship. We’d spoken on numerous occasions about writing, and Mary and I even approached him with the Virtual Ballard Project, but nothing came of it.
Earlier this year, while comparing various experiences and aspirations, I expressed interest in reading something he’d written. (His mother was a librarian. Do I really need to say more?) I continued to ask for several weeks, but had really eased off the throttle when he quietly produced a photocopy of “Last Bus From Boise.”
After reading his manuscript, I felt motivated to lend what help I could. Ryan had no computer, and cautioned me that the copy he’d given me was from the only copy he had, so the quality of the printing might make it hard to read. I OCR’dthe document into a Word file, cleaned up all of the errors, printed Ryan a copy and then saved the Word and text files for him to a floppy.
It’s only taken about six months, but the little piece of paper I found today prompted me to make another attempt to get these to him. It was really out of the blue. He sounded about as surprised as I was when he answered his cell, and saidg that he’d just returned from traveling abroad the day before last. (He’s been in Europe, Russia, Germany,.) He gave me his mailing address, and I walked the envelope to the post office immediately after our conversation, letting me complete yet another detail.
