14 February 2003

Good morning. Happy Valentine's Day. I hope you have plans that don't involve overcrowded restaurants or last-minute shopping, no matter who you're with.

Jenn has been going around telling people I'm witty and intelligent. Muh. Now I have to go and be witty and intelligent. I'm still recovering from the sleep I didn't get night before last. I dozed in the car on the way back from Palo Alto last night. It was a long day.

A good day, though. We got the chair and footstool (Malung!) at Ikea. I'm a little unsure of the placement of the chairs. Right now they're roughly equidistant, and I think they should be clumped and a little more angled. We will work it out in time, I'm sure, especially when we're not working around seating constraints for five instead of three.

Yarg. I hate webhosting and domain registry and all of that stuff. I really do. Now the lovely problem is that www.marissalingen.com will redirect where I want it to, but none of the subpages will. You can't type in www.marissalingen.com/morphism.html and have the page show up. This is distinctly suboptimal. You can follow the link to the Morphism page from the page you get for www.marissalingen.com, but it doesn't recognize that there are any subpages to redirect there...aaaaagh. And I can contact the domain registry people about this problem, but I started contacting them about problems three days ago and haven't heard back yet, so I am not sanguine about how quickly they'll work it out.

So any of you-all who want to link it should probably use the marissa.gritter.dsg.stanford.edu/pageyouwant.html form, and I'll make a huge stinkin' deal out of it before we move and it changes again. (Because obviously it's not going to be at a Distributed Systems Group Stanford page when Mark is no longer a member of a Distributed Systems Group at Stanford. This should not be construed as a claim that I am a Stanford student. I am not a Stanford student. I have gotten so many people getting arch and snotty with me: "Well, as a Stanford student, surely you should know [something that's a matter of opinion and not falsifiable, but they can claim that it's just that I'm ignorant/stupid -- it's the equivalent of "Well, I'm no big city lawyer, but...."]." So I want to make it clear right now: I am not a Stanford student. I have never been a Stanford student. I have never claimed to be a Stanford student.)

Well, that was certainly witty and intelligent, wasn't it?

The Merc is doing it again. Bleah. I swear, the next person who proclaims pink the new black is gonna get it. We won't specify what "it" is, just that no one will enjoy being on the receiving end of "it." In fact, I'm generally unfond of people proclaiming anything the new black, but my top two peeves on that one are pink and black. "Black is the new black!" Yes, you're so cute and ironic. Shut up.

(I know, Momma, I know: "We don't tell people to 'shut up.'" Can't we make an exception if they call themselves fashionistas? Please?)

Right. Was I going somewhere? Oh yes. Ikea. We went from Ikea to Long Life (moo goo gee, yum!) and thence to Games of Berkeley for another pinochle deck for Timprov's birthday. Then to The Other Change of Hobbit, where everybody's favorite bookstore clerk, Will (the Nice Mean Man), was in a slightly better mood and no longer seemed to think of himself as the worst person on the planet. Which is always a plus. Also I got A College of Magics and Summerland (thanks, Bobbie!). And then we went to Mondo Gelato, where they lacked in creme caramel, but rather than pouting, I had chocolate marzipan with my dark chocolate, and all was well. And then we came home and I worked on Dwarf's Blood Mead and Soldrun was steely and strong and totally in charge of the magic-assisted interrogation of her brother, and she kind of enjoyed it. I love this kid. I'm really glad I made her up.

Also Timprov put together the new chair and footstool and showed his mom "Galaxy Quest," and then we got Mark some [Time]Quils for his cold, and then we went to Palo Alto and fetched Mark and got Cuban food. And it was good good.

Today there will be work, and a bit of erranding, and a bit of driving around looking at pretty stuff, and a lot of hiding at home away from the Valentine's Day dining crowds. I think I've given up on witty and intelligent for today, though. I think vertical and coherent is what I'm going for today. I can do witty and intelligent some other time, maybe.