Sunday savers

Today we went down to Madison, it being a warm and sunny day, temperatures up into the mid-30s. Tom bought some books at Half Price Books to take along on his trip to Las Vegas with his friend Bob Mitchell next week. We also went to a Barnes & Noble that we had not tried before, and it was a great discovery. Much larger than the one in the mall on the east side of town and with quite a few used books for a dollar, too. Since we are both of a frugal -- not to say cheap -- nature, this was a good thing.

I bought a Structures rugby shirt at Savers, in good condition and on sale for $2.50. This was used, of course, but last week I had a 20% off coupon for Kohl's and found one of their Sonoma rugby shirts on clearance, the total cost coming to about $3.00.

Like I said, cheap. But now nattily dressed.

Tonight the Masterpiece Classics version of Pride and Prejudice ended. Next week we get Emma. I pointed out to Tom that Emma provided the basic storyline for the movie Clueless, in which the role of the half-brother, Josh, was played by Paul Rudd, who was in The Object of My Affection with Jennifer Aniston,which we saw the other night, and that both of them were in Friends, although she was a main character and he was only brought in in the final season to be the love interest (and eventual groom) of Phoebe, played by Lisa Kudrow, who had played a ditzy waitress, Ursula, on Mad About You, and then played Phoebe on Friends in which the character Ursula sometimes appeared as Phoebe's evil twin. It drives Tom crazy that I point out all these meaningless connections -- who does the voice-overs for animated movies and that the same woman (Marni Nixon) who did the singing for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady did the singing for the Mother Abbess in Sound of Music and also played one of the other nuns. A week from now Tom won't even remember that he saw The Object of My Affection, much less who Paul Rudd is or what other movies he may or may not have been in. I, on the other hand, have the sort of brain that tucks such stuff away.

I remember when Brother Rene and I were going to school in Mexico City back in 1974 and we were walking back to the monastery. I was patiently explaining (or rather, he was patiently listening to my explanation) that the tilde (the little wiggle over the n in Spanish words like señor is believed by some to have originally been two n's, one written above the other. He looked at me in amazement and said, "Your head is full of the most absurd information."

Sad, but true. If only it were full of useful information, imagine what I might have made of myself!