3 March 2004

Well, that was fast. Yesterday afternoon, we went to Office Max and bought furniture, and this morning at 8:00 a.m. they delivered it. Compared to when Mark and I bought these office chairs or when Timprov bought his desk...wow. This is really good. So now we just have to put stuff together. Well, and move stuff around. Still, it's a good, good thing. I think the chair I got will be better for my back. The one I've been using is not adjustable in any regard. The new one is, and I picked it in part so that it would be less comfortable for me to curl my feet underneath me. That's comfy in the short-term but not good for me in the long-term. (Besides, I can sit like that when I'm not working.)

In less immediate news, it's my parents' anniversary. Yay! Thirty-one years. Which seems like a long time to me, and even, I think, to them. They're coming up on 2/3 of their life spent married, in not so many years. They're over 60% already. That's a lot.

I'm reading Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August right now: a WWI book, on David's recommendation and I think also Wendy's, maybe. It's very well-done, very well-written. I'll probably go searching out more Tuchman when I've finished this -- I'm surprised I haven't run into her before, since I've certainly heard of her before. This book is very vividly written. I think it would be even better for someone more visual than I am.

I've reached a sort of peace with the weather. Fine, I tell it; be spring if you want to. Or snow if you want to. I don't care. A major part of this is that when he isn't sleeping, Timprov isn't literally hovering next to the door with his racket in hand, waiting for the courts to dry out enough to play on. Not literally. Close, though, and it reminds me that spring is good, too. I missed spring, too. I missed all four seasons. And, as Timprov reminds me, we get another winter next year. (We get to stay here. Nobody is going to make me go back.) Minnesota is quite obliging in its seasonal succession. It almost never gives any season a complete miss.

I don't really understand it: Minnesotans joke about having a short spring. They tell the same joke as in Nebraska -- "Spring fell on a weekend that year, so we had a picnic." But it's not really like that at all in Minnesota. I mean, maybe these folks want more spring than they're getting, but that doesn't mean they're not getting spring. And it's good spring, too, after all the snow -- even when it backslides into winter, it's good spring. It smells right for days and weeks at a time. It rains like it's supposed to, good and hard on the roof and the melting snow piles. Things go green that will stay that way. Things get muddy and wormy and windy, and it's different from the way things have been for months, and it's good.

(I did remember the problem with buying an Easter dress in Minnesota: one really has no idea what the weather will be like until the week of. If then. On the other hand, we do own a car, so I can be dropped off if necessary, and I also do own cardigan sweaters if that additional warmth is necessary.)

Does anyone else have eyelashes behaving ridiculously lately? Why are mine? They're not batting themselves of their own accord, thank goodness, but they seem to be wedging themselves under my eyelids at deeply uncomfortable rates. Why? Why why why? This is not a pleasant trend. I spend all of my time blinking furiously and looking upset. I'm not upset. I just have mean, mean eyelashes.

Oh, I had something else, something less ridiculous than eyelashes or Easter dresses. I have no idea what it was, though. It may have had to do with something deep and philosophical, or spiritual, or political. Or it may just have been more babble. I don't know, but it's gone now.