25 April 2003

There was a trail of fresh pumpkin seeds outside my door yesterday. Sometimes it feels like the symbolism dial in this universe has been turned up to 8, and it's starting to hurt my ears a bit.

I also woke up to find that the French bread had molded. The French bread has not even gone crusty on the edges. Yet it's molded. All right, California! You have already won: I am leaving! You don't have to keep sliming my mushrooms and molding my bread and pulling other such California pranks on me! I am cowed, vanquished; I will go! Just leave the rosemary buns alone!

I'm going to make rosemary buns today. We'll see how they turn out (other than moldy if we don't eat them fast enough; stupid California). Bobbie and her bread ladies were making them when Timprov and I were in Minneapolis last, and they were good, but they all turned out slightly differently, so we'll have to see what the humidity and different yeast and so on will do to mine. I don't have French bread to use up any more, so that's something, at least.

Sigh.

Yesterday I worked on the Not The Moose and finished reading The Gift, which I enjoyed but didn't fall in love with. Started reading Lindsey Davis' Silver Pigs, which is a mystery set in ancient Rome. (What is it about historical mysteries and ancient Rome? They're right up there with Victorian England, for heaven's sake.) It's got a very contemporary, breezy tone, and I'm enjoying it, but I'm not particularly excited about it or its sequels. This has been the case for several mysteries I've tried, and it's got me wondering: am I just not a mystery person? But I was really truly excited about the whole Dorothy Sayers/Harriet Vane series (yeah, I know, that other guy's involved, too: Bunter), and I'm still kind of excited about tracking down the Kate Wilhelm mysteries I haven't read yet, and about getting around to the Lawrence Block books in the good series. (Tanner and Bernie: good series. Scudder: bad series. I'm not sure about the wossname series, haven't tried that yet. You know the one, or else you probably don't care. Either way.)

So...it can't be that I am an Anti-Mystery person, but I think I'm probably not A Mystery Person. I read speculative fiction like I drink skim milk or water: in great quantities daily, both habitually and due to a natural need. I'm not like that with mysteries, and I don't think I ever will be. Which is okay: having one genre to keep up with obsessively is probably enough. And I can still enjoy mysteries, and I still have times when I seek them out. Mostly because of the plot. There are times when I want a story, dammit, not a series of words or even a series of events. And I can't always count on speculative fiction for that -- it's not inherent to SF or fantasy or anything else under the umbrella there. But in a mystery, the story, the plot, is inherent. If you don't have one, you don't have a mystery.

Ah well. Last night I called from Berkeley BART to tell Mark that Timprov had come up with me and we were both on our way home, and on the phone in the crowded station, I thought Mark said, "I broke your Mark." I was quite upset. Then I found out that he broke my mug. Oh. Well, I suppose that's better. It's my big ol' nifty eggplant mug that Scott (the one with a Michelle) made for me for (college) graduation. The bottom says "All done! Yeah Risstopher!" (Because, as we all know, that Scott is the only person in the world who is allowed to call me Risstopher Robin, and he takes advantage of that privilege.) I would be much more upset over the mug if I hadn't initially thought that Mark was himself broken, and also if it wasn't just the handle, which can be glued back on.

Apparently I'm going in backwards mode; well, all right. Before that, we went to Tully's with Zed, and my tea was inordinately hot; before that, Long Life, same Zed. And I got a book, because I can follow directions, and the rest of you who read Zed's weblog evidently do not choose to do so. Which is why I have a book and you don't. Nyaaaah.

(It's evidently a quite mature day for me. Maybe I should wait a bit to write the cover letter to go out today. Hmm.)

Before that, Timprov and I had sorbetto and gelato, respectively -- he had the banana sorbetto, which was astonishingly good. Wow. Next time, if they have it, I'm getting half that and half dark chocolate gelato, except that I might keel over from icy goodness. But we already knew, from previous discussions of the Olympics, that icy death potential makes things better.

(And the Wild are playing again tonight! Woooo!)

Before that, I met up with Timprov in The Other Change, but Will (The Nice Mean Man) wasn't working there. And as Zed later sagely observed, "No Will? No Way!" We bought nothing. Before that, I was at David's teaching him a silly Scrabble-tile game and otherwise hanging out. And then we're back to the working/reading at home time.

I think I see why telling things in reverse order is not so popular.

So...much to do today. As opposed to those days when I sit around eating bonbons and reading movie magazines. I'm going to get groceries for the next week, including supplies for Liz and Tor's visit, and other chores and errands have this habit of multiplying on me. And then, of course, there's "Moss" and the Not The Moose Book and that essay I want to finish this week but may not end up actually doing because it's fairly low on the priorities list.

It's such a hard life I lead, that I don't manage to find the time to write an essay I want to do because I have too many other good ideas and projects to work on. Oh woe; oh alack. The sorrows. The tribulations.