17 October 2004

Mark's plane was as on-time as one can expect, and our dinner was tasty, albeit slow. (Ciao Bella: reliably tasty, only serves fish from the environmental green-light list, but weekend service is not the best thing ever.)

There were high school kids at the restaurant for dinner before their homecoming dance. One group looked so much like we did in their shoes -- not individually, not so that I could pick out which of them was me and which Scott and which Mike and so on -- but collectively. It was the same vibe, the same set of geeky awkwardnesses and spontaneous delighted laughter and punny groans. It made me happy to see them. Considering how many geeks I know who didn't find that kind of a good time until college or after, it was a warm and fuzzy thing.

When we went to winter formal (which was called Criss-Cross, because the girls were supposed to ask the boys, which was "backwards," and I do wonder how long it'll be before they realize how obnoxious that assumption is), the photographer kept wanting to know who was "with" whom, because it was two girls and two guys and obviously we must be a double date, right? Except we were pretty emphatically not a double date. (Some of us were more emphatic about that than others.) We were a symbiotic collective. We told him so. Apparently school photographers are not sure how to photograph symbiotic collectives. You would think they would have training in such things, but apparently no. (What do they teach them in schools these days. Hmm. Somehow I'm not convinced C.S. Lewis would have approved of the symbionts. Or of my dress for that dance, actually.)

Anyway, anyway. It's a cool and rainy Sunday here, perfect for the oatmeal raisin cookies I've promised Mark. So the house smells like cinnamon and allspice and cloves, and I'm happy with that, and Mark is happy with the cookies.

"Swimming Back from Hell by Moonlight" is starting to come together into chunks of prose instead of a series of cryptic notes to myself. It doesn't have very much dialog. I like dialog. But this story isn't the sort of story that needs much of it or benefits much from it, so I will persevere without it. The main character is not much of a smartass. This is not, shall we say, my norm. It's not the norm in the world around me, either, so I don't feel too horrible about it. (As my high school physics teacher said at every opportunity, better a smartass than a dumbass.) She might be a smartass at other times, but during this story she's just not up for it. These things happen.