Friday, July 2, 1999

Matt and I dropped by the house lot yesterday and were very disappointed to discover that they haven't worked on our house at all this week. Our lease is up in two months. I need to call the apartment complex and ask them when we'd have to sign a new lease if we're going to stay on another month or two.


Braz and Kris are coming up (down? over?) for a visit this weekend. They were going to have to split time between us and Braz's sister, but Whitney is going home for the weekend, so she won't be around. So we get them all to ourselves! Yay! I'm not sure what we'll do. I think I heard Matt talking to Braz on the phone about possibly grilling out, and if they bring their swimsuits we could go to the pool, though the pool is likely to be crowded. It's supposed to be a real scorcher of a weekend; according to the radio, the high for Saturday is supposed to be in the upper 90s, and Sunday even hotter. Since Braz and Kris don't have air conditioning, I bet they'll be glad to be in Williamsburg! We haven't talked about going anywhere to see fireworks, either. Apparently Williamsburg is celebrating some sort of anniversary, so they're having a really big to-do. That means really huge crowds, and given the confusing roads, it also means that the colonial area will take hours to clear when everything is over. Matt and I usually watch the fireworks from the parking lot of a shopping center not far from the colonial area. The ambience isn't as nice, but crowds make me tense. But maybe with friends... Well, we'll see.


Because the Fourth is on Sunday, the office is closed on Monday. Yay! A short week! Even shorter, for me - The Luck family reunion is going to be next weekend, and my brother is coming into town on Thursday (I think). I promised to take at least half a day off on Friday to spend it with him. Depending on whether I get any work to do next week, I may take the whole day off. I kindof miss my brother.

Which is a weird feeling. We hated each other growing up. It wasn't so much that we thought of each other as rivals; it's just that our attitudes rubbed each other the wrong way. They still do, sometimes. When we're doing "the family thing" and John and I are together for more than a few days, or if one of us is especially tired, any little spark will get fanned into a bonfire. It doesn't help that we're both stubborn as mules.

But around the time that I was graduating from high school, we achieved a sort of tense truce. Our mom was going through a sort of rough time and drinking a lot, and in the face of her very erratic and frightening behavior it was better that we stand together rather than face the storm alone. And once I moved out of the house to go to college and we didn't have our contradictory personalities constantly irritating us, things improved even more. When Matt and I were considering having traditional attendants at our wedding, I was going to ask John to stand for me instead of a maid of honor.

We're a lot alike - it's probably part of the reason we don't get along. But we both like gaming, and we like a lot of the same people, and now that we've figured out how to be in the same room without irritating each other, we enjoy each others' conversation. And just lately, he told me that he's starting to read.

I was always the academic one. John's no dummy (sometimes he surprises me with how intelligent he is, even if he can't spell worth a damn) but he's always been more visually oriented. When I was three, I taught myself to read by memorizing my favorite books when my parents read them to me, and then figured out which word-pictures went with which words. John just looked at the story pictures. I think it was one of the reasons that he didn't like me - as he came behind me in the school system, teachers who ought to know better assumed that if he was my little brother then he'd be just as academically oriented. He had to struggle to get through classes that I mostly ignored. And he never really enjoyed reading.

In college, though, he took an English class for which he had to read Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He adored those books. The movies which were based closely on the books came out around that time, and their visual beauty captured him, and we had long discussions about the differences. I had to go out and buy both books and read them just so I could keep up.

Now, he's stuck in a hick backwater town with absolutely nothing to do, and he's reading more. He told me a few weeks ago that he wants books for his birthday and Christmas - when he sent me his wishlist, he listed the few books he already has, and begged for more.

I'm very excited. I've been waiting for ten years to share my reading passion with John. There are a few series that I read over and over and over again, and I'll start him on those. I've got two books I want to give him when I see him next week, and if he likes both of them, then I've got his birthday and Christmas both wrapped up - that's about fifteen more books. (I like long series. What can I say?) I want to take him to the bookstore and make recommendations and find out what he likes.

I feel like a little kid, just thinking about it - I've got these treasures, and I can't wait to share them.

"Look what I've got! Isn't it neat? You wanna hold it?"

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