I have to drive to Palo Alto Monday to give some blood at the hospital and see the doctors about this operation coming up next month and now I'm guaranteed not to have a flat on the highway. There's a good spare sitting in the trunk. The engine may explode, but the tires will hold. It's written down that way somewhere, a story everybody knows.

Last Monday, my birthday, I'd been thinking I should buy myself a present of some sort. Go to a decent restaurant and let it whoop. I remembered MsW had given me a take home menu from an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood, saying the lasagne was good. You don't take MsW's suggestions about food lightly so I thought, well, why not go? It was my birthday, after all, yet, as the day wore on, other things came up and soon, so much for good intentions.

And so I thought, today on Telegraph late enough in the morning for the stores to be open, my tire being fixed and me in a good mood, why not buy a book or two, a CD maybe? Haven't done that in a long time so I bought a CD and then two books at Shakespeare's, one a remaindered hard cover, Eveless Eden by Marianne Wiggins for $1.89. The cover displays the picture of a woman with a Leica and the blurb talks about murder and a love affair between a journalist and a photographer. What the hell, for a $1.89, what's to lose? I don't read any more, of course, but in this world hope springs eternal and I could always use it for fire wood.

Marianne Wiggins. I've never heard of her. The Amazon.com site has a blurb saying she was Salman Rushdie's wife, at least when that blurb was written, the author of six other novels, one of which, John Dollar, was, in the opinion of many, hot stuff, so I began to read. I don't read any more, as I've said, but I read some more this afternoon. I'll finish it later this evening and talk about it tomorrow. Maybe, given this kind of encouragement, one day, I can make it two.