list day

Right, quick update before I jump back into the fray:

1. Robin McKinley's newest book is released today. I can't. Freaking. Wait. The last three of her novels have been released in the close vicinity of my birthday, and I look on this as the cosmos' present to me.

2. I never sleep anymore, and when I do, my dreams are so realistic (which is really sad, considering the utter dailiness of my daily grind -- I mean, come on, imagination, where are the pink elephants and yellow penguins and mongooses playing harmonicas? instead it's all phone messages and dictated documents and dreaming about not being able to sleep. God.) that I spend most of the day wondering if what I think happened actually happened, and usually I'm too tired to distinguish, so I hardly ever say anything to anyone for fear of bringing up a conversation that only happened in my id.

3. This pill loves my mind and hates my body. I've been bleeding for two weeks and really, Aunt Flo, it's time for you to take your moustache and your sour moods and GO. Like, now.

4. No cigarettes since September 8th. It hasn't been nearly as hard as I was expecting, so now I'm suspicious that all of a sudden the temptations will be incredible. I keep repeating to myself, "I'm not a smoker," and, "It won't make me feel any better." They're negative expressions, but whatever. So far they work. And I'm already feeling like a million times better physically. I wonder when the gunk is going to start coming out of my lungs. That should be interesting. I'd take pictures, but my camera phone wouldn't do it justice.

5. My VCR has developed a creepily cannibalistic taste for video tapes, so I have no records of this week's episodes of Sarah Connor or Bones. Boo. They were good eps too.

6. I will have finished all four seasons of The Office in time for the premiere of Season Five next Thursday -- hooray!!! (Once I'm no longer buried in ignorance I will start posting about this wonderful, wonderful show. Eigh Ann pointed out to me that Rainn Wilson was in an ep of Dark Angel, long ago, leading to us reiterate our ancient motto, "Dark Angel is life.")

7. I will totally have to adopt a goal of Bridget Jones' and learn to "program the video" (once I get one which likes to savor the tapes, not eat them) so that I can spend more evenings out -- like at Fiddler's, where I would attempt to work up the courage to find an accompanist to sing open mic nights. (This is a goal that falls a little below writing and getting into grad school; I kind of die a little bit when I can't sing, and I've quit singing at church for the time being, for a number of reasons, so I'm dying a little bit and I have to fix this.) Risky, but less work (and less money) than learning the guitar.

8. My tired eyes are not registering reality quite as well as they ought, and are out of sync with my inner ear, so on the whole I'm really funny to watch. Poor Simon (also a huge klutz -- they do say pets and owners tend to resemble each other in personality if not looks) jumped up on the bed last night just as I was turning around and I wound up punching him in the ribs. Fortunately my recovery was superb: With the reflexes of a dancer I bent down over him and kept him from jumping down and hiding, and loved him up until he started purring and forgot all about what had happened. Until an hour later when I knocked a table knife off the kitchen counter, and, in an effort to move him out of the way (he was standing at its projected Ground Zero), kicked him in the eye with my big toe. I swooped him up and cuddled him and he immediately purred his assurance of forgiveness. (This from the cat who gets Puffy Tail if the wind blows. And I can't do anything to scare him. Such a darling little soul.)

9. The local grocery store has agreed to give me boxes. Yay! I have decided that, once I'm moved in to the new place, I'm breaking down the same boxes and storing them for the next move. Finding them is such a royal freaking pain.

10. I slept through my alarm, which I had set early to keep an appointment this morning in South Bend. I was up and dressed and out the door in seven minutes, which included the time it took for me to remember that I had an appointment, remember where I was, remember who I was, remember where my clothes were, remember how to put them on, and form a complicated strategy for the obtaining of coffee-on-the-run at McDonald's.

11. I like Conor's new album. A lot.