28 September 2001

My great-grandma Lingen always says deaths come in threes. My uncle Phil gets rather upset at this, from time to time. He says, "Of course they do, when you stop counting and start over every time you get to three!"

I think this week is kind of like that. I have to try not to think like Grandma Lingen. It feels like one thing has been going wrong after another -- yesterday a transportation miscommunication that left me sitting in Oakland alone for 45 minutes with 15 cents on my person -- and I have to remind myself that it isn't all part and parcel of some horrible thing called The Bad Week. When I hear that Sarah has a cold and Mary Anne burned her arm and Michelle has a landlord issue and Tim got news he didn't want, I can't attribute it to The Bad Week. There is nothing mystically bad about this week. And there is nothing mystically better about next week. Bad periods don't come in weeks any more than deaths come in threes.

Nonetheless, I'm glad it's Friday.

Last night, we rented "A Fish Called Wanda," which I had never seen before. It had some funny lines but will not make my "must see" list. Also had some hazelnut gelato -- Mark doesn't like gelato, so we don't go out for it, and I was at the store picking up DayQuil for him, and it was on sale. So. Yum. When Kev was here, Timprov and I took him to Ocean for lunch on the way back from the airport, and then we got gelato for dessert. Kev got eggnog gelato. He said it was exactly what he wanted, tasted just right. But I can't fathom that. I accept that Kev meant it. But -- eggnog gelato. Oof. How could that be -- well, I had just eaten a plateful of utterly unspecified sea creatures at Ocean, so I suppose I ought not to criticize.

I've been reading The Arts in Spain -- I had such amazing good luck with a big ol' book of Russian art, in terms of edification and inspiration, that I decided to try the same with the Iberian Peninsula. I don't know much of anything about its art, or didn't before this week. Well. The book about Russian art (something beginning with Firebird -- I've got the name written down somewhere) went into folk arts as well, and into unusual craft/arts, like the Fabergé eggs. The stuff I've got about Spain doesn't even try. Painting (but only on canvases), sculpture, and architecture, those are the arts, and if you want something else, it's not art, buddy, and why don't you just move along? And if you want to find out about somebody who is not considered a Great Spanish Master, also move along. I feel like it's a conspiracy of these books to keep me from the actual interesting parts of Spanish arts. My Japanese lit prof was engaged in a similar conspiracy, so I'm familiar with them. But I won't give up. I am more stubborn than these authors.

I also started Whose Body?, borrowed from David. It's the first of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey books, and I wanted to see what they were like. Right now, I'm wishing I had heard more aristocratic British accents, since I'm having a problem "hearing" Lord Peter. He's all upper-class British, using "what" as an interjection with no query in it at all, but then he'll go dropping the terminal g's on his words and say "ain't." And I'm sure Sayers got it right, but I don't know what it sounds like, so in my head he keeps veering between William F. Buckley and Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. Anybody who knows me and wants to call me up and do this accent for me, feel free.

(Timprov suggested that perhaps he's supposed to have the Buckley/Cletus dichotomy going on. Hee.)

Mark is still sick -- he's a zombie -- and it looks like Timprov is, too. And canary me, I just sing....

Well, I woke up this morning (late: 7:15!) with inspiration to work on "Letters to the Ancient Living." Which is a bit annoying, since I wanted to work on another story and maybe two other novels, maybe three. We'll see how it works out, I suppose. If I was really, really going to work hard, I might could do all of it.

Then I would collapse in a heap. Hmm. I think perspective is once again in order. I should get me a supply of that. It seems to come up unfortunately often.