5 August 2002

So. We went shopping, and it wasn't nearly so much of a disaster as the last time. Although it certainly could have been better. So many clothes that were so very ugly. It made me glad that some of them didn't exist in my size. So very ugly. Hot pinks. Neon pinks. And all the worst prints of the 60s and 70s, some of them with neon pinks superimposed on the earth tones. Shudder.

I am not opposed to bright colors. I really, truly am not. I own the most blindingly orange bikini I've ever seen. And I wear it. But so much of what I saw yesterday was so hideous that I'd have spent the whole time I wore it flinching, and that's not flattering even if the clothes might have fit. Which most of them almost certainly would not have.

But! I found a store. It was about half stuff I'd buy for Mom or Lin and half stuff I'd buy for me, but that's all right. The people who run this store understand the value of fabrics feeling nice when you touch them and wear them. They understand about stuff that drapes well and hangs well. And -- and! They understand about curve. I tried on an outfit I didn't end up buying ($110 -- too expensive for the number of times I probably would have worn it), and the skirt just fit. Which was such a relief. I'm a 4 and an XS there, which is the smallest they make stuff, but I think my mom and Timprov would both implode with worry if I got smaller, so as long as they don't start making stuff bigger, all is well. And I got a very happy birthday sweater from my grandparents instead of the shoes they'd intended to have me buy, but that's all right. I really love this sweater.

(Mom is going to make fun of me when she sees it or a picture of it, though.)

So, exhausted but ultimately triumphant, we got greeting cards for various August events, finished buying our wedding present for Sarah and Jeff, and headed home. There's a new Trader Joe's near us, and I wanted to look for pluots and sprouts (which, in context, I want to pronounce like pluots with the vowels reversed, sproh-oots, but no, they're just sprouts, and they go in Timprov's egg-rolls), and we ended up coming out of there with both of the above and cherry tomatoes and peach tea and garlic cheese spread and wheat crackers and edamame and loads and loads of fruit leather. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the pluots, edamame, and fruit leather are for the plane ride, but the edamame keep nudging at my brain to come eat them, so we'll see if they last long enough to take with us.

Mark and I watched the new "Ocean's Eleven" last night. At the end, in the little commentary thing that followed, Soderburgh said that he wanted to make it sparkly, and that made me happy: he knew what he was going for and did it. If he'd gone on about how he wanted to make it a great tale of friendship or something like that, I would have kind of winced and looked away. But sparkly, yes. Definitely sparkly.

I think they could have hung Julia Roberts' fancy clothes on a hanger and used Stephen Hawking's voice box and had much better acting for their money, though. I really think she was worthless in that movie. Not that I'm a huge fan of Ms. Roberts to begin with, but usually we're both happy, because she gets to make big famous movies and I get to have no desire to see them. I was IMDBing her, and until I remembered "Conspiracy Theory," it looked like "Hook" was the last movie I saw her in. And, you know, I liked "Hook" all right. And then I kept looking, and the list looked so appalling that I was glad not to have seen them. (Any of you who know movies, feel free to tell me if I'm missing one in which she was not nauseating. I'll give her another shot if someone I respect says so in a specific case. Otherwise, ick, "America's Sweethearts?" Does anybody like John Cusack that much? I mean, I like John Cusack and all, but there are limits.)

It interested me, too, that in the 90s we can replace one black guy out of eleven with two black guys and a tiny little Chinese guy -- and still not have the entertainment value of Sammy Davis, Jr. (And I also noted that they could broaden their horizons beyond "a token black guy," but could a woman be involved in the actual heist? Why no, of course not.)

Well, I'm going to read some more of MI6 today. Should go faster now that I'm out of the Baltics, which I care about, and into the Balkans, which I don't really, at least not now. (Huh. I should decide to set a book in the Balkans. The number of books about them in used bookstores is staggering. But that seems like a really lousy reason to set a book somewhere. "Hey, it was really trendy five years ago!" Not usually the way publishers want to go, although I don't notice any formerly trendy Balkan spec fic lying around.) Other than that -- errands, errands, of course, and short story work and novel work. Good stuff, all.

I was telling Sarah this morning on e-mail, I feel like my life is about to finally come off "pause." We'll be gone for her and Jeff's wedding, and then when we get back, it'll only be two and a half weeks to WorldCon, okay, closer to three. Still. And after WorldCon, it will be September. And September is the magic month, because next September, we won't live here. After September, I can see there from here. And I can see September from here, so...I can almost see there. And in the fall, universities and colleges will start saying, "We're going to be hiring!" and we can start looking at where Mark might end up teaching, and thus where we might end up living, permanently or for a year or two. It's squirmy and exciting. And it's coming up. I can almost taste it.

Or maybe that's the edamame. Whatever.