1 October 2001

Salon is living up to its reputation for oh-so-deep reporting. One article about how the new "homeland" agency sounds a trifle ominous. Duh. And one about how many women are no longer wearing stilettos. Okay, call me crunchy, call me granola, tell me you'll never let me out of Berkeley's radius again except maybe for the Winter Carnival -- but who ever thought stilettos were safe? Who ever thought, oh, good idea, I'll wear stilettos, and my life will not be imperiled? You can't run from an attacker in stilettos. You can't walk for help if you get car trouble. You can't navigate a rainy or icy street. You can't live a life with normal-person risks in it if you're wearing stilettos, and you never could. It has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with common sense. Clogs. Boots. Sandals. Even cute little flat slip-ons. Come on.

Of course, part of this is that I've inherited my father's sense that there's no such thing as a truly pretty shoe. It might be made of pretty fabric, or something like that, but it will be generally diminished by the very fact of being a shoe.

Anyway. I went up to Rockridge to have lunch with Avi, and I was riding on the train with the Oakland Raiders! At least, that's who I guess it must have been. They all got off at the Coliseum, and they kept saying things like, "We're gonna win!" And very few people actually won at the Coliseum yesterday, so it must have been. Brush with fame again. First God, now the Raiders. There were more women on the Raiders team than I would have anticipated. Hurrah for equal opportunity.

I have never understood the mentality that takes credit for its favorite team's win. Even when it's a reasonable sport like baseball. One of the things I like about tennis is that I've never heard someone who wasn't directly involved claim credit for a tennis win. Wooo, we won! Who "we," kemosabe?

I hope other people communicate with that joke's punch-line as well. It's not particularly worth retelling. I am amused at how many times my family uses jokes as a code shorthand.

So. Good lunch with Avi -- Zachary's pizza, yum. I would be more bouncy about having gotten Zachary's, but we're going to Minneapolis this week. We get Frankie's. Fraaaaankie's. Yum. In the meantime, we get to finish off leftovers. Including Red Jungle Fowl's Joy. Of course. I will get around to putting the recipe for that up eventually, but in the meantime, trust me: it makes lots. Jen Wilcox, when she gave me the recipe, told me it fed five to six. She didn't tell me five to six of what, and I'm still wondering, because none of my answers are coming out reasonable. It would feed eight to ten Timprovs, and while there are theoretically people who eat more than him, it's still a lot of food.

There's a lot of leftover stuff like that we're taking care of before we go. Much to be done. Mark is running the car in to be serviced this morning on his way in to work. I'm washing the knives and recycling the newspapers. Stuff like that, stuff that just didn't get done until now. It's been a long time since we were all going out of town -- in the recent past, I haven't worried about drinking up all the milk or eating all the leftovers, because Timprov would be around to use stuff and take care of stuff. But we're all going this time, so leftovers it is.

I typed the edits to the first section of Reprogramming yesterday. I had it wrong -- I thought I had it on double-space, because it was clearly not single-spaced. But it turns out, for reasons I don't yet understand, I had it on space-and-a-half. So what I thought was the first 50 pages (which is what the people I'm sending it to first want) was not. And the section I'm sending them ends on a cliffhanger. Ah well. I'm keeping it around until tomorrow afternoon or evening, because I'm going to try to make sure I have nothing else to retro-edit. I don't think I will, but I might. Actually, I just thought of one snippet that will go in there. But it's going out tomorrow. So you folks in the Bay Area: there will be book celebrating when I get back. Plan on it. The twelfth or the thirteenth if at all possible. And if you have suggestions, let me know what they are.

Avi was saying the writing group needs more stories. Come on, he said, you've got until the seventh. Well, no. I've got until the second. Which is tomorrow. And I have to pack and get my book sent out. So -- I may send them a really crunchy awful draft of "Letters to the Ancient Living" if I find the time to get it done, but I may have to pass for this time. Sending books out should count for something, I would think.

Talked to C.J. last night and made plans to see him this coming week, on Thursday. He sounds as excited to see me as I am to see him, which is always good. It's hard for me to gauge, with people who aren't fond of e-mail, how much they miss me. And I miss Ceej a lot. E-mailed Curt and Aaron and Heather/Dave/Siri. Need to hear back from them yet. We're going to see Aunt Ellen and Uncle Phil on Saturday, also Great Grandma, provided she's doing well. She won't be doing well. But provided she's doing well enough.

I don't know -- I don't know how many last visits you can have with someone. I don't know how many times can be the last time you see your great-grandmother. I just don't know. But I guess we'll find out.