Describe in 1000 Words or Less

I've been diddly-doing around all morning, reading this, writing that, avoiding the other.

Our latest writer's group assignment is to put down a detailed description of something, anything, as long as it's not an event. The piece is not to exceed a thousand words. That's a yuk yuk for me. Here's my entry: The book was bound in blue.
That's less than a thousand, right? Really, description is not my strong suit. My strong suit is a dark gray, pin striped, three button in a size 40 regular. I'm tempted to write,...the book, when opened, contained words in small, black print that say, "Call me Ishmael" and whatever follows that for the first thousand words. Either that or, it was an itsy bitsy, teeny weenie, little bitty, tiny, very, very, very, very, very, very, (950 verys later) small bikini. That should do it.

Odd, though, that this assignment should come up right now. I have just finished "From Where You Dream" and there is an exercise that Robert Olen Butler gives his students where they have to orally describe something in the smallest detail that I thought was far too difficult for me. Lo and behold for a thousand words, here it is anyway. One of the book's chapter starting quotes is Picasso's "If only we could pull out our brains and use only our eyes." Of course those two onlys in the same sentence show why Picasso painted instead of wrote. Ah well, I'll give it a go at some point and bore you with the result.

In the meantime I sent the group a slightly revised version of the nightmare I recounted several blogs ago. It doesn't quite fit the criteria, but our group leader suggested reading Dean Koontz or Stephen King for description examples and I thought my nightmare scenario slipped neatly into that category.

I have to go now. My mind is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, empty. (What am I fretting about? Description is a piece of cake.)