Over the past few days, I attempted to find a few books by Dr. Seuss: The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Green Eggs and Ham, and Fox in Socks. I needed the first three for an April Fool's day column I was writing for CleanSheets, and the last for a column I plan to write for the college paper, which I'm sure you'll be hearing about soon.

[As I'm actually writing this almost a week after the fact, it's safe for me to tell you about the April Fool's stuff. Ah, the mixed blessings of getting behind...]

I found The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham in the campus library. I had no trouble finding them, as I'd had occasion to stop by the juvenile fiction section in the past. Which reminds me of an incident from three semesters back.

I was in English 345: The Victorian Novel at the time, and we were reading Middlemarch. The professor thought it might be a nice change of pace if we dramatized some scenes from the book. So we were randomly assigned partners and scenes, which we were supposed to act out, with one twist: The characters were to say what was really on their minds, rather than being polite or pretending to feel otherwise.

I and my partner got Dorothea and Casaubon's last conversation. Just before it really gets underway, Dorothea reads to him, with Casaubon occasionally asking her to mark various passages. The author does not actually specify which work she was reading, so I decided to have a bit of fun with this. Specifically, when we met, a bit before class, I asked my partner if she'd mind if we used Green Eggs and Ham for this purpose. No problem, she said, but I'd have to find a copy.

No problem, I replied, and zoomed across the campus to the library, returning about five minutes later with the book. She noted that I'd apparently known exactly where it was. Guilty as charged.

The actual scene went quite well, by the way.

This past Friday, as mentioned in previous entries, I went to the main branch of the public library system, in Jamaica. Now you know why I went. Yes, S.E. Hinton, and, yes, I wanted some clothes, but my main objective was Seuss. There I found Fox in Socks, but The Cat in the Hat Comes Back continued to evade me.

It wasn't until this afternoon, after class, that I finally found the last book on the list, back at the local branch of the library. Somebody presumably returned it in the interim. So I grabbed it, throwing in Bartholomew and the Oobleck for good measure, and then rushed home.

So I called my brother. The one who got engaged recently. He came over, and the two of us managed to transform the place in just a few short hours. Part of his function was just to keep me cleaning, and off the computer, so I'd actually get it done in time. It worked. Then he left, and I got right back on the computer, chatting with Heather for a bit before finishing the cleaning, doing the ritual search for crumbs (having first wrapped up and put out ten of them, and then done my best to forget where they were, which comes naturally to me), really finishing the cleaning, and then finally starting to write the book review.

Once I got started writing the thing, it was easy. I'd spent a couple of weeks kicking ideas around in my mind; once I had the exact text, all I needed to do was write everything down. Shortly thereafter, I'd sent it to the editors, whom I then pestered with a few follow-up messages. Oh, well. That's the drawback of doing this stuff at the last second, I guess.

Anyway, it turned out pretty well, I think. And so did my room.