We had dinner with Amber and with Evan yesterday, and it could scarcely have gone better. Well, except for Evan's oven exploding. That part might have been better.

(Go ahead and follow the link, Ma, it's fine. Evan dibs'ed this one for his journal, and it being his oven, I acquiesced.)

What I want to know is, how do waitbeings have a perfect record on the dessert menu? That is, why do they never bring me the dessert menu when I want dessert, but when I don't want it (when, for example, there are pots de creme waiting for me at Evan's house), they hand it to me without even asking? Why is that? How do they do it? It's just as impressive as if they perfectly read my mood. Am I doing something wrong? Does anyone else notice this problem?

Pots de creme are good, by the way. My brain has been composing a song about pots de creme (pronounced "poh de crem," more or less), to the tune of "Kodachrome," with lines like, "They're s'posed to be goooood for breakfast, but I think Evan maaaaaade that up, so Mama don't taaaaaaake my pots de creme away."

I borrowed the entire Sandman series from Evan. I should read one before packing, to see if they would be efficient use of my packing space or if I should just wait until I get home to read them. I'm also going to raid David's bookshelves again this afternoon. That should help.

I'm still reading The Broken Crown -- haven't taken that much time to read it, compared to the other stuff I've been doing, and with a book that long, it can end up taking me more than a day or two to finish it under those conditions. Wow. More than a day or two.

So. I worked on the book and sent out queries and submissions and all. I went and got a roll of 100 stamps. I decided not to do a list for my absence -- if I wait and deal with two weeks of rejections all at once, I'll have more choices of where to send which stories. Theoretically. Right? Sure. Mostly it was that the more I looked at it, the less it seemed worth the work. So that's one thing off the list, at least.

("They're served in a cuuuuuupcake wrapper, it's hard to get the choooooocolate out, so Mama don't taaaaaake my pots de creme away.")

So, besides raiding David's books, I plan to make banana bread, pay the last of the bills, do some laundry, finish my ASF grant application, try to get a hold of people I want to see in Minneapolis, and work on the book. Possibly some other stuff, too: I'm desperately in need of office supplies. We're almost out of envelopes and paper, and we're on our last cartridge of black ink. But that might not get done today. I also need to get copies made for my Chinese project, and I need to return library books, bag the recycling, pick up my prescription, mop the moose, feed the bear. A lot of that will wait for tomorrow, though. Have a good Thursday.