16 April 2002

Hmm. I wonder if you could do some kind of divination based on the spam that appears in your inbox. It would have to be indirect, of course, not "Today I see for you many sexy teens, with some weight loss and a chance of refinancing your home in the evening." Spamomancy. Hmm.

Damon Knight died. He did so much for SF that it's hard to say how much. Just a list doesn't really cut it. I never met the man, but I know he'll be missed.

(The problem with this journal format, as opposed to posting bits and snippets off and on, is that I have to come up with some transition from Damon Knight's death to the rest of what I want to say, or else make a leap. Either way, not so easy.)

So. I drove into Stanford yesterday -- probably the most peaceful drive of any length I've had in California since I left Davis. (I-80 to Davis is one of the closest things I've found in California to being in Nebraska. Even the highway number is right.) I kept thinking of friends coming to visit, how I'd drive them that way and show them things and what we'd do the rest of the week, because then it was sort of my town, in my mind. It's my town more than it is theirs, if they're from Minneapolis or Chicago or D.C. or wherever. It's like the difference between a spouse and a cousin. I'm not married to the Bay Area, by any means, but I know it a bit now, and when I introduce it to other people, I can turn things towards its good side, or the side that they have most in common with it. And it makes things a little better that way. Makes me a little more cheerful about being here. For awhile.

Right. Ahem. Drove into Stanford, picked up Mark, and drove down to Evan's place for his famous spicy pork chops. (I am informed that they are famous, anyway. Tasty is what I would have called them, but if Evan wants to go with famous instead, his call.) Good conversation too. Pleasant drive home to the sounds of "Abbey Road." (I was listening to Ben Folds Five on the way out, and "Song for the Dumped" came on just as I hit the toll plaza. Err.)

And I read some more of The Red and the Black and some of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and the contrast between Julien and Keith was just about perfect. The Amazing Maurice is the first Terry Pratchett juvenile I've read, and so far I like it pretty well.

Oh, and it was a three rejection day. Yay! They have remembered that I'm alive! And out they go again today. I already have the markets picked for them.

I've been cold all day -- for the last 24 hours or more, I mean. Somehow it thought it was going to be summer on Saturday and Sunday morning, and then a couple of hours before the writing group people came, it changed its mind. And I slept under lots of covers, wearing flannel and socks, with Mark in furnace mode, and I'm still cold. By now I'm thinking it's Just Me. Also, somewhere in the middle of yesterday's couple-of-thousand words, I think I screwed up my back good and proper, because it feels just wrong. It doesn't hurt a lot. It just feels wrong. And when I try to get it rubbed out, it makes me feel like a really, really bad human being. I don't mean that I'm sitting around feeling guilty for asking Mark or Timprov to rub my shoulders. I mean that whatever location it is that's messed up is pretty tied in with emotional responses, because I can skip the causality and just go straight to feeling emotionally awful. Isn't that fun? So I'm calling Dr. Bill, trying to figure out when I can get in to see him. As long as I leave it alone, it's just moderately uncomfortable, but it doesn't seem that it's a good thing when trying to fix it makes me want to burst into tears. So. That's the report from the M'rissa front today. Kind of random, but that's how I'm feeling. I'm going to go avoid the letters to the editor now; I really don't feel like finding out what perfect solution they've proposed for the Israelis and Palestinians this morning. I like dreams of peace at least as much as the next person, but I think we all need to recognize the difference between a dream and a plan here.