Wasn’t planning to post since it’s D’s birthday.  We already ate a
bit-o-cake. Now the phone’s ringing off the hook and The Practice is on commercial break, so I have a spare minute to put one together.  

We did birthday morning at B&N; could’ve gone to Borders, but, says D.,
B&N has a better selection of books for kids.  And it’s D.’s
birthday.  Did I mention that?  Here are the books I didn’t buy at
B&N (although I handled them, read parts, leafed and leafed, smiled at the
idea of purchase):

Simulacra and Simulation – Baudrillard
Cod – Kurlansky
The Social Life of Information – Brown, Duguid

Couldn’t justify buying them, not because
they’re not interesting or because I have too much to read already, but because
a move might be on the horizon and, well, books are heavy.  We already have
a ton.  Ton-and-a-half?  For the next three months or until the
crystal ball crystallizes, it’s the library for me.

Another book story: This afternoon in
Smithville, Mo., at Stampede’s last game (ever?), I spent a few minutes in the
second half digging in my coach’s bag (you know, pens, pencils, a dry-erase
marker board, first aid kit, whistles, note cards scribbled with practice
scripts, a binder with birth certificates).  I was rooting around for a
copy of the National Federation of State High School Associations Simplified
and Illustrated Basketball Rules for 2003-2004. I’m not usually one to fuss
about officiating, but today got me riled.  An abomination! I was this
close || to book-crossing
the unqualified duo, gifting them with the Simplified and Illustrated as
one to remember us by in our last game of the season.  Yep.  That
bad.  But I refrained, remembered that if they weren’t certified officials
by now, they probably didn’t aspire to be.  And I’d be villainized as one
of those coach/parents. And it wouldn’t be worth the $4.50 I paid for the
small, rule-filled pamphlet.  But that’s what was on my mind during a few
minutes of the fourth quarter of the last game I might ever coach: doing a
book-crossing for the refs with the Simplified and Illustrated. 
Maybe I should’ve. Then again, book-crossings aren’t supposed to be mean spirited. 
Right?