31 July 2002

You know how you adjust the seat when you get in to drive the car, because everyone else who drives your car is approximately three miles taller than you? (Or shorter than you. Whatever.) And you know how sometimes you think you've got it all settled and then you start driving and the seat rocks backwards or forward to click into its actual position?

That's kind of how my brain and body feel right now, only I evidently haven't driven enough to have my brain click backwards or forwards into the right position. And in the meantime, it feels a little precarious.

Maybe I ought to listen to some Blues Traveler.

Jenn and I did manage to have lunch yesterday, and it was good, both the conversation and the food. And the present as well! It was a hematite necklace. I love hematite. I just want to pet it. It also turns out that it hypnotizes Timprovs. Who knew? I was playing with it and talking to Jenn while Timprov was trying to eat, and evidently it was quite distracting, the shiny beads...ahem. Anyway. We also came up with journal redesign ideas. We shall see if they get implemented. Well, no, we'll probably see when they get implemented. But it may be soon or it may not. Ahh, the mystery, the suspense.

Anyway. Mark and I had planned to go out for a genuine tea yesterday, with little sandwiches and all. But the tea place is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays (and those are, coincidentally, the days it's most convenient for us to have tea), so instead we went and spent my godfathers' Barnes and Noble gift card and got some tea with no little sandwiches or anything. It was a different nice afternoon than I'd intended to have, but still a nice afternoon.

(This seems to be a theme this week. I'm hoping it doesn't continue. I'm supposed to see David and Zed this afternoon and evening, and I'm hoping that that is exactly what I do.)

I finished reading The Eyre Affair, and I think it had greater standard deviation than most books. There were scenes I thought were really good -- when they were doing "Richard III" with "Rocky Horror Picture Show"-style audience interaction. That was really nifty. Other parts of it really annoyed me. So while I think the average level of the book was in a fairly comparable place to a lot of the stuff I read, the highs were higher and the lows were lower.

I've started Stephen Dorril's MI6, but I'm not sure I want to schlep it on the train to Oakland and Berkeley and back, so I may pick out a piece of fiction to take instead. Something more schleppable.

(I just like that verb.)

I worked on the book yesterday, too, but it was the frustrating kind of work: the editing kind. The tiny detail setting editing kind. The kind I know I need to do but take me forever and don't result in a very large word count. Sigh. I'm hoping to get some good work done this morning, and maybe that'll click my brain back into place.

Oh, and here are some pictures to amuse you:

Avi at House of Nanking. Which he liked.

Alec at House of Nanking. He is not fond of pictures, but he was at least laughing for this one. I wish he'd been looking right at me and laughing, but, you know, we deal.

Me and Robert.

Me and Mark at home. The white tank top is new, and I like it, although I like it somewhat better in person than in photographs.

I foolishly forgot to snap any pictures of Jenn and me, and Timprov has not really been in picture mode. (The world collectively pauses in shock.)