25 May 2003

Yesterday we saw my godfather's house up in Napa, which was nice, and got to hang out with both godfathers and Aunt Doris and Uncle Rudy. It's still a little odd to me that somewhere along the line, my godfather Dave and I got to be a rather similar demographic -- he was a grown-up way before I was. It's kind of fun, though.

And today, today is my Grandma's birthday! She's 71. She does a good 71, I think, where by "good," I mean "interesting" and not so much "well-behaved." I'll call her this morning. We already sent her present, and I hope it got there, but I'm not counting on it, because Mark's package from the folks didn't arrive yesterday. Two Amazon boxes, but no package from the folks. Gotta love the USPS. Wooo.

I finished the Sørensen stories yesterday and just barely made a start on Iain Pears' An Instance of the Fingerpost; no opinions there yet. Worked a little on the Not The Moose. Did some laundry. For some reason, the drive to and from Napa made me feel like I'd been beaten with a stick. We've done longer drives than that, and on worse roads, but I guess it was just a bad day for it. Also, I was confused at the California custom of slowing down at the bottom of a hill. I realize that you don't want to pick up speed and slam into the people in front of you, but proceeding down the hill at the same speed as you use on the straightaway should be possible...yes? No? Perhaps? And then we wouldn't have had traffic slowdowns because there was a hill?

I would also commend the use of the turn signal to people, except that I've already gone through that. But we had a good rant with Dave about it, picking up each other's rant and going with it, so I suppose it could have been worse.

One of the things I did in the car was to start a playlist for the going-home CD I'm going to get Timprov to burn for me for the move back. Some of it is silly, obvious homecoming stuff -- "Sloop John B" and "Omaha," maybe a little Carole King. And some of it is stuff I sing different words to -- They Might Be Giants' "New York City" and James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind." I'm going to go poking around the CDs, now that I'm not working from memory, and see what else I can find. I think some of it might be songs that won't be appropriate any more, Liz Phair's "Go on Ahead" and the like. I'd like a nice mix of "get the hell out of Dodge" songs with the homecoming stuff. Not too many of the former, just a few mixed in.

Ehhhhh...I managed to sleep until 7:15, but I still feel worn, beaten on. Today's plans are nothing too onerous, though. I'm not sure what they are, and I won't be sure until Mark wakes up. But I'm pretty sure they're not going to involve running up and down Mount Ham a couple of times, so I think we'll be fine.

I think I'm going to answer some of the e-mail that's been getting old in my inbox, and then we'll see if His Impending Birthdayness is awake and has a Near-Birthday Decree for the day.