You Will Have an Enjoyable Experience ...

In the Near Future. That, my dear Gate, is the fortune I found in my evening fortune cookie. All I can say is: I certainly hope so. I like enjoyable experiences in the same way I like empty houses.
 
I see Blogger has created a new post editing menu. I now have a choice of several type fonts:
 
Lucinda Grande
Verdana
Trebuchet
Courier
 
text color ability, too.
 
Whattya know, Daddy-o!
 
So back to our regularly scheduled blog-o-roonie, Gate.
 
Tour de France Update: Lance Armstrong vaulted from sixth place to the second slot this weekend, closing in behind Thomas Voelker at a mere 55 seconds. Voelker is dead on his velo if the photos I saw are anything to go by. You can bet the farm Armstrong will be cruising into Paris to claim his sixth consecutive Tour de France win!
 
My Life With the Dogs: My neighbors all have annoying small dogs of the fluffy, snapping, snarling, endlessly barking breed. There are two dogs just down the street from me that will follow you up or down the street snapping and snarling. There have been complaints about these two annoyances. I'm more a cat person than a dog person, but there are some nice, charming small dogs. The Brussels Griffin, Scots terriers and Westies. And say, Gate, that annoying crow seems to have caught the first steamer for parts unknown as I haven't heard that in a long, long time.
 
Two More For the Gorey Collection: This week I received two more additions to my Edward Gorey collection.
 
The Epiplectic Bicycle, 1969, Dodd Mead
The Edward Gorey Calendar For 1980, Workman Press. This calendar features scenes from several of his books:The Blue Aspic, The Glorious Nosebleed and The Other Statue each scene featuring the addition of Gorey Details: an enlargement of a certain area in which we can see, now, disturbing little creatures. The calendar came with the original envelope, which is very nice.
 
Cartes Postale: I also collect postcards. Today I received a card from 1914 featuring the Berheimer Brothers' Japanese Bungalow, Hollywood, California. On the top of a huge hill near the foothills sits a charming Japanese style bungalow. There's a Japanese style gatehouse at the end of along drive and the entire lot seems to be circular. Amazing. I've never heard of the Berheimer Brothers or their Japanese bungalow ... it's never been mentioned in any of my Craftsman magazines or, to my knowledge, in any of the current Arts and Crafts Era magazines. Now, of course, I want to find out more.
 
Synchronicity Strikes: You may remember, Gate, my ordering The Bomb by Frank Harris. The other day whilst on my lunch break I happened in to one of the local used booksellers establishments and what do I find but My Life and Loves by Frank Harris. This is the sort of thing that happens to me with alarming frequency, Gate. I get interested in a subject and then I find lots of books on that subject that I previously had never been able to find. I've literally, pardon the pun, been in some obscure used bookstore, turned down an aisle and found just the book I was looking for. Anyway, Jack, I dug the vibration that the Universe was sending me and latched on to this copy immediately.
 
I know very little about Frank Harris other than he was a good friend of Oscar Wilde's and had written what was considered the definitve biography on Wilde in the early 1900s when Wilde was Not to Be Spoken Of. From reading the introduction to ML&L I found that Harris knew practically everybody who was anybody from the 1890s through the 1920s: Oscar Wilde, James McNeil Whistler, Randolph Churchill, Richard Francis Burton, Otto von Bismarck, Edward VII and the list goes on and on.   Harris travelled extensively, too. ML&L also features his apparently rather frank descriptions of his wide sexual experiences which made it a big hit with the flappers in the 20s. I doubt I'll read this cover to cover ... that is from page one to page 970, rather it seems the kind of book one opens anywhere and starts reading, opening another section at random and so on.