15 June 2003

I dreamed that all of my major characters were going to be eaten by aliens at the end of Part One of the Not The Moose, except Ansa Nikkanen, so I had to make Part Two a separate book. There are no aliens in the Not The Moose at all. Often I feel compelled to add "in this book," or "in this part of the series" when I categorically state something like that, but this time I'm standing firm: no Not The Moose aliens. I think it's just that I haven't gotten much work done with the family in town, and that part of the brain is spinning its wheels.

Yesterday we had a pre-graduation picnic for Mark with his co-workers and his research people from Stanford. (Pictures to follow.) Mark was happy with the turnout, I think, and I was happy that Mom and Grandma were here to help me out with picnic logistics and food prep and cleanup. I really would have had no idea how much food to get, and better too much than too little. And I'm also happy that the picnic is over, so we can have leftovers for lunch today and go out to Jing Jing tonight and not have to think about how much food and what kind and fitting it into the fridge and all that. We have a fridge full of food, but better that than too little, as I said. I can eat veggie pasta salad for days on end.

We have a watermelon on the counter, though. My folks and I bought it because Mark likes it, and then he didn't even cut it open at the picnic, and neither did anyone else. So we have an entire watermelon to eat. I don't like watermelon. Timprov doesn't like watermelon. The family had better eat a bunch of it at lunch today.

It's nicer here this morning than it has been lately, and we have a new-to-us AC, whose usefulness is as yet dubious. So there's that. I'm clean and dressed, and I'm going to unload the dishwasher and read whatever I can get through in the paper before it's time to go. (Word believes that I mean that it has a time to go, and I will read the paper before its time arrives. It has therefore marked my "before it is time to go" as incorrect. Stupid Word.) If I have time after the dishes and the paper, I will work a little bit on my book, to try to stave off the inappropriate alien dreams. Take care, all of you, and have a great Father's Day.