3 March 2003

So: this morning I am about to convene the Allthing. Fictionally speaking, of course. But first: yay! It's my parents' 30th anniversary! Happy anniversary, parental types! (They got married 3/3/73 at 3:00 p.m. Nobody ever has an excuse for forgetting. And now it's '03 and it's their 30th. That's just a lot of threes.)

When I was little, I called it "our anniversary." Because my folks said to me, "It's our anniversary today," and I thought, "Oh, all right, it's our anniversary." And I would tell people so. (Waitbeings and shop clerks found it particularly amusing.) So it just became something we always said. It's not that they didn't celebrate their anniversary by themselves, it's that it's also a family celebration, not just for the big years but always. (Because we're good at this celebration thing in this family, see.) And my default unit of "us" when I was little was three, with the next most likely unit being five.

I occasionally refer to my parents collectively as "the binary star." They each have their own energy, their own composition, their own path, and sometimes those paths have them physically closer to each other, and other times one or the other of them has to travel a bit farther. But they're always part of one system. (They also have some pretty eccentric planets. But we're not naming names on that one -- at least, not anybody else's name.)

So I'm listening to Paul Simon and appreciating "our anniversary." Yesterday I took a break from the Dutch history book -- oof. They really know how to take the punch out of a good revolution, those Dutch. I'll be getting back to it today, although I may take another break to read something else if Napoleon doesn't get there soon enough. Anyway, what I read instead was Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche, which was entertaining enough. My initial impression was, "Why would I read this when there's Dumas in the world I haven't read yet?" And I guess that's my final impression, too, although it acquired more of its own character after the first few chapters. So the shading has gone more into, "I can read this when I'm out of Dumas in the immediate vicinity" instead of "What's the point?"

I've spent a big chunk of the morning talking to my grands and sending a big ol' political e-mail to my mom, so I should get back to work without further mumblings in your diffuse directions. Lunch, work, errands, etc.