It happens fairly frequently that when I go to fill my water mug and get hot water for my breakfast, the water cooler jug has emptied. (I eat breakfast at work.) The water cooler jugs hold 5 gallons of water, which is to say 40 pounds of water. This is important. They're big round jugs with narrow openings at one end. You rip the plastic off the opening and upend the jug into the little well in the water cooler. This is easier said than done, but I've managed it with only minimal mess on multiple occasions. Yesterday, however, I managed to get my pinkie finger caught between the edge of the well and the jug. A moderately ugly bruise formed under the fingernail, and I couldn't type with that finger for the rest of the day. Today it aches to type, but I don't feel the urge to immobilize the finger, at least.

This is the same finger that broke two years ago when I tripped going up some stairs and which (because we thought it was merely a bad sprain at the time) healed crooked. Maybe I should just cut the finger off and be done with it.

---

I'm a little peeved at Amazon.Com. A couple of weeks ago, I gave my brother the book Pawn of Prophecy, the first in a series of five books. He read it and wrote me e-mail to say that it was terribly cruel of me to give him a book that was To Be Continued. So I decided to send him the rest of the books of the series now, instead of making him wait for his birthday. I logged onto Amazon, selected the books, and filled out all the various forms to have them sent directly to John. Imagine it: You've read the first book in a series and liked it a lot, and one day your arrive home from work to a package on your doorstep that, when you open it, turns out to be a present from your sister. You open it, and there! Are the other four books. Isn't your sister a Wonderful Person? I thought so.

As part of those forms, I asked them to wait until they had all the books and then make a single shipment.

When I checked my mail last night, I had a message from Amazon telling me that since I was such a good customer, they were going to send what was available right away, breaking up the order, without changing my shipping costs. They were sending John the fourth book.

Go on, imagine it: You've read the first book in a series and liked it a lot, and one day you arrive home from work to a package on your doorstep that, when you open it, turns out to be a present from your sister. Great! You open it, and there - taunting you cruelly - is the fourth book in the series. Where are books two and three? You don't know. Why would your sister do this to you? Isn't she Cruel and Evil?

I didn't want him to think I'd done that to him on purpose, so I had to write him an e-mail explaining, thus spoiling the surprise. K.T. thinks I should write Amazon and complain. I may yet, but I had e-mail this morning that the rest of the books had been shipped, so John won't have to wait more than a day between shipments.

---

Still no responses from people who had previously offered to help us move, so I guess they're reconsidering now that the event is at hand. Either that, or they don't read my journal, which is true in at least one case that I can think of.

The next survey that no one is going to answer is: If I were to set up a system for GMs to share plot ideas, would anyone participate?