AJ�s package finally came today. He�s been waiting and waiting for it to arrive. Last week, after fielding innumerable questions about prisms, I tracked down an internet-based science supply shop and bought him one of his own. He spent the afternoon holding it up to lights and trying to view the world as one enormous rainbow.

We also ordered a packet of sunprint paper, so when he tired of the prism, we headed out into the yard to collect objects with which to make pictures. We picked some clovers, a lilac leaf, a gingko leaf and a frond of ribbon grass and laid them out on the blue paper and left it in a sunny spot. AJ is immensely pleased with the result. Tomorrow we�ll try another one, perhaps looking inside the house for interesting shapes. I have my suspicions that I might be receiving a new digital camera to replace my broken one for my birthday in a couple of weeks. If I do, I�ll include some pictures of AJ�s art.

I also received a package today, copies of Zadie Smith�s On Beauty and E.M. Forster�s Howard�s End, on which the former is based. These are the selections for our next book group meeting, although I�m not certain if I�ll get to them in time, because I�m caught up in Jan Kjaerstad�s The Seducer, which I�ve just started. The books-on-the-nightstand phenomenon is getting out of control again. So much so, in fact, that a stack of books that are lower down on the reading list are now holding up my lamp so that it is tall enough to allow for a bigger stack of books underneath it. In addition to the aforementioned titles, the stacks include David Mitchell�s Cloud Atlas, VS Naipaul�s A Bend in the River, Orhan Pamuk�s Snow, Carson McCullers� The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Narendra Jadhav�s Untouchables, Stuart Dybek�s The Coast of Chicago, Frank Delaney�s Ireland, Edward Ball�s Slaves in the Family, and Khaled Hosseini�s The Kite Runner. Now if only I could spend a week in bed reading, I might be able to see the top of the nightstand. [harriet drifts off into blissful daydream of quiet and books and no interuptions or guilt]. Ahem.

And finally, the mail also brought another fabulous CD for both AJ and I from freshhell. This one is possibly even more stylistically eclectic than the last one, which is to say that it is my kind of CD. We�ve heard the beginning and AJ is fascinated by the way the guitar says �beep� at the beginning of Rose Royce�s disco classic, �Car Wash.� Actually, so am I.

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