22 December 2003

I have a desk.

You probably thought I had a desk before, but what I had was a tiny little computer table. Whenever those surveys went around asking, "What's on your desk?", the answer was always what I could cram in under the monitor or on top of it, plus one glass or mug. No room for anything else. No using the mail scale on my old desk. No setting the newspaper on my old desk. Mug of writing implements? No room.

But now, now we have my grandfather's old desk installed in the office. Mark and C.J. put it together again last night. There's still some fine-tuning to be done, especially with the ergonomics but also with actually putting things in the drawers and so on. But still: my desk, my real desk. It feels quite good. It's just one less thing to settle in.

The house -- and all of you who have houses already know this -- comes with infinite capacity for improvement. There is always, always something more that can be done to make the house prettier, cleaner, more comfortable, better kept-up. The trick is finding the line, when it'll be good to do more house stuff and when I just need to relax awhile. But the desk, the desk was firmly on the side of the line that contains Good Stuff To Do. So, yay desk!

We drove up to Timprov's dad's church yesterday morning, because the big Advent tradition is for Cal (that would be Timprov's dad) to read the Grinch for the children's sermon. It was Good. We had Good pizza and got Good boots (but not for me -- one pair for Mark and one pair for Timprov, to be efficient about the whole boot-advice-and-trying-on process with the C.J.) and also ran a Good Christmas errand, and then C.J. and I got Good concretes and did a few non-Christmas errands. So generally, Good. And I have my desk. And I didn't feel Good most of the day, but that was all right, because it will go away soon. And Mom and I compared menu notes, so my grocery shopping today should be okay, and all will be well. I'll head out fairly soon and try to beat the rush. I've got a list. I'll bring my journal and a book for standing in lines. It'll be fine. And then I'll come home and there'll be an Andrew here, another thing on the Good list.

Mer wants to know why she can't have all the sympathetic characters of Lord of the Rings as members of her family or servants of her household. Faithful retainers etc. I will do one better than that. I want to know why I can't trade in on them. I would gladly let my uncle be a dwarf leader, for example, if it meant that Gimli could be my dad's brother instead. Not that I don't like my uncle. It's just that Gimli has a lot more to do with earthly chronology (yes, I know, fictional character from another world, that's what I'm saying) and has been a more consistent part of my life to date. Let us not even attempt to list the cousins I would trade for Eowyn. The answer is definitely not all of them, but...well. I've got a lot of cousins, is the thing.

And it's Solstice, and I'm going around humming the carol that annoys Celia for interfering with her other song in Google searches. Or maybe it isn't Solstice at all. My aunt Mary's calendar claims that it is, but some other sources have been claiming it was yesterday. Ahh, I see why: it was at 1:04 this morning that the sun was at its most southerly point. Got it now. Well, it's all more sunshine from here!

And more errands, but never mind that part.