Damn Dog
I'm dog-sitting for Canadaboy, who's off visiting friends and family in yep, you guessed it, Canada.
Ollie, CanadaBoy's Welsh Corgi, and I get along pretty well most of the time. I first met him in mid-March, and just the absurdity of his looks (front paws smartly turned out like a ballet dancer assuming first position; a comically long lower canine on one side) charmed me instantly. (I guess if Ollie could speak, he'd say that the feeling was mutual about the absurdity of my looks!) When CanadaBoy gallivanted off to Mongolia late in the spring, I volunteered my services as Ollie's dogsitter. And all was well. CanadaBoy saw the obvious chemistry and booked me for a return engagement.
Ollie's and my rosy honeymoon period went south shortly after I'd ensconced myself comfortably in CanadaBoy's apartment once again.
Thursday afternoon. I'd been at my office. I came in, and at first glance it looked as if it had been snowing in the small apartment. White everywhere.
Wait a minute.
I sagged against the archway dividing the kitchen from the bedroom. Oh no. Hell no.
There's no easy way to say it: That dog ate my book!
He ate a book that I'd only bought two days before -- A BEAUTIFUL MIND by Sylvia Nasar, which I'd been circling it for a long time. (I almost bought a big beautiful trade paperback of it before I left the US.) The copy Ollie noshed on was a mass market paperback copy. I'd actually been registering the book on bookcrossing.com at practically the same moment Ollie was indulging his newfound taste in biography.
This hasn't happened to me for a long time. Twenty years, to be exact. Back then, I had a dog who enjoyed THE SHORT STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER before I had a chance to. That dog just trotted up to the shelf and pulled it off with great impunity. Ollie seems to be more of a "nightstand bandit".
Should I turn right around and buy another copy of A BEAUTIFUL MIND? My friend Bronson would suggest that Ollie's eating the book was fate, and that it's not meant for me to read this particular book.
While mulling it all over, I posted on bookcrossing.com and wrote about how the book had been sacrificed to Ollie's broadening his culinary horizons. One of the members, BookCemetery, has a page at the site where members can have 'closure' when something goes horribly wrong with a book. The send-offs to "Book Heaven" are hilarious. Check out the final solemn rites for my book, a.k.a. Ollie's snack here: http://bookcrossing.com/journal/3081891/bybee/book_a-beautiful-mind-sylvia-nasar
Ollie, CanadaBoy's Welsh Corgi, and I get along pretty well most of the time. I first met him in mid-March, and just the absurdity of his looks (front paws smartly turned out like a ballet dancer assuming first position; a comically long lower canine on one side) charmed me instantly. (I guess if Ollie could speak, he'd say that the feeling was mutual about the absurdity of my looks!) When CanadaBoy gallivanted off to Mongolia late in the spring, I volunteered my services as Ollie's dogsitter. And all was well. CanadaBoy saw the obvious chemistry and booked me for a return engagement.
Ollie's and my rosy honeymoon period went south shortly after I'd ensconced myself comfortably in CanadaBoy's apartment once again.
Thursday afternoon. I'd been at my office. I came in, and at first glance it looked as if it had been snowing in the small apartment. White everywhere.
Wait a minute.
I sagged against the archway dividing the kitchen from the bedroom. Oh no. Hell no.
There's no easy way to say it: That dog ate my book!
He ate a book that I'd only bought two days before -- A BEAUTIFUL MIND by Sylvia Nasar, which I'd been circling it for a long time. (I almost bought a big beautiful trade paperback of it before I left the US.) The copy Ollie noshed on was a mass market paperback copy. I'd actually been registering the book on bookcrossing.com at practically the same moment Ollie was indulging his newfound taste in biography.
This hasn't happened to me for a long time. Twenty years, to be exact. Back then, I had a dog who enjoyed THE SHORT STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER before I had a chance to. That dog just trotted up to the shelf and pulled it off with great impunity. Ollie seems to be more of a "nightstand bandit".
Should I turn right around and buy another copy of A BEAUTIFUL MIND? My friend Bronson would suggest that Ollie's eating the book was fate, and that it's not meant for me to read this particular book.
While mulling it all over, I posted on bookcrossing.com and wrote about how the book had been sacrificed to Ollie's broadening his culinary horizons. One of the members, BookCemetery, has a page at the site where members can have 'closure' when something goes horribly wrong with a book. The send-offs to "Book Heaven" are hilarious. Check out the final solemn rites for my book, a.k.a. Ollie's snack here: http://bookcrossing.com/journal/3081891/bybee/book_a-beautiful-mind-sylvia-nasar
5 comments:
A very funny story and link. Thanks for making me laugh about something so tragic. Nice post.
Sorry about your book's untimely demise. I am a book lover too. At least my cats don't eat my books. I didn't read A Beautiful Mind, but the movie is great, so if I were you, I'd try to get another copy and hide it from the dog.
Hey! Cool blog. I blogged about your blog in my blog. check it out...
www.ocdman.blogspot.com
post your story in the community forums at bookcrossing and i'll bet someone will send you a copy. it's a good book and there are great people always looking to send books off. (There's that related site about the book boxes and book rays too). i'd send you mine but i freed it into the wild a long time ago.
Bookcrossing rocks!
the idiot
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