9 October 2004

C.J. seemed to feel appropriately fêted, which is good. Everybody else seemed to indicate a good time was had, too, and it was nice to meet Eric. Roo's language acquisition is just amazing at this point. He's gotten a lot more comfortable with repeating what you've said -- not in a parrot way, but in a considering way. For example, "No, sweetie, we have to go in the ladies' room; we can't go in the men's room" got a response of, "Why we can't go inna men's room haffa go inna ladies' room?" I was also amused: I told him, "It's Uncle C.J.'s birthday. Can you tell him 'happy birthday'?" The response was, "Cake?" That's right, kiddo: priorities. We walked past the sushi prep counter: "What dose people doing?" "Making dinner," says Auntie Mrissa. "Why?" "Because people's [tickles] tummies get hungry. Wanna see?" "Uh-huh." So I picked him up to watch them making sushi. This met with great approval.

Being the Auntie Mrissa is a very cool thing.

I finished reading Lisa Goldstein's The Alchemist's Door, and it was all right. Done well enough, not too exciting to me. Then I read Mitali Perkins's Monsoon Summer, another of the YA advance reading copies Stella got for me. It was pretty all right, but I don't know why. It was awfully messagey, and you could tell from the very start of the book what Lessons Our Heroine Would Learn. And then she learned them. And somehow the book managed not to stink to high heavens, and I'm still not sure how. Very confusing. I read Analog this morning, and Andrew Greeley's Thy Brother's Wife, which was one of my 10c library book sale specials. Every once in awhile a trashy Father Greeley novel is the thing, especially when it takes less than two hours and costs less than a quarter. His views of human relationships are just far enough off to feel like an alien culture to me, or like a human writer trying to write an alien culture, except I know he's not trying. It's strange. I once explained to my grandfather that I have a harder time accepting Tom Clancy's world than Nancy Kress's.

Now I'm reading Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines. The premise makes me roll my eyes, and I'm wondering why, because I have accepted dumber premises with nary a qualm. I'm just not getting pulled into the story, and I can't put my finger on why. I don't think it's just post-draft crash setting in (although post-draft crash is setting in). For whatever reason, this just isn't a favorite. They can't all be, I suppose.

Yesterday was the anniversary of pulling the moving van into the driveway. I've been home a year now. It's good here. It is.