This isn’t customary but instead of a blog post here I wanna share two little excerpts from emails I got today that I thought were worthy of a larger audience.

The first one is from Serena who is on a family holiday in B.C…

“when me and my sister were in the thriftstore the ladies were going on about this “beautiful dress” that this woman had tried on and bought and were envious of how pretty it looked on her. i didn’t get to see the dress but my sister did and she said it was hideous. luckily, the woman was at the market 15 minutes later WEARING the dress so i got to see it. it was purple and gold and really long with a tie around the middle. and then across the line where the breast is, there were these tassley beads. it was also long, like down to the ground. it was seriously BRUTALLY ugly to the point that it makes you wonder how people can have such poor taste.”

(There’s so many funny things about this story it’s hard to know what to say. The fact that Serena finds the dress not just ugly or even brutally ugly, but BRUTALLY ugly, caps lock and all. The description of the dress is pretty good. It does sound outlandish. Also I love that even though it sounds like a very fancy (albeit ugly) kind of dress, the lady couldn’t wait to put it on, even though she was just going to the market. I’m laughing even as I type this. Anyway. Props to a brilliant re-telling, Serena.)

This one is from Ian who is in Toronto and I think his cancer is going pretty well…

“write me soon. put my name in your next blog entry. say i was climbing an appellation mountain and thought of ian russell. or if you decide against writing it then will you actually just do it! that would be fine. if i don’t see you write this i’ll assume that that’s what you’re up to.”