16 May 2000

Well, since there was a message on the answering machine yesterday evening from Tristan saying that they wouldn't be coming to stay with us until Wednesday after all, Matt and I popped out a quick note to the MeadeHall mailing list explaining that we could be online at the usual time. Not everyone got the mail in time, so we didn't actually have a Hall session - we just sat around on the usual IRC location chatting and having private messages, some of which might even have been Hall-related.

Jeff told me that Braz told him that all the clues were already in play, somewhere, and that I actually had most them. My response to Jeff was something along the lines of, "Sure, I have a pretty good idea of what's going on. But not one of those clues tells me how we can possibly get out of this with a relatively happy ending."

That's the goal, of course. It's ending soon; Braz already admitted that he couldn't stretch things out much longer - not with us pestering him on a near-hourly basis for details and reactions. He swore it wouldn't be this week, but thought it might be next week, and was certain it would be done by the end of the month.

And the killer is, I think I can see how to get a happy ending out of it. But it would only work if Braz does what I think he's going to do, and if no one else interferes. But even then, the repercussions could get ugly. And Braz has been driving me bezerk for weeks now by not doing what I think he's going to do, and for months now, the others have been interfering.

We're having a session tonight, approximately twelve hours from now, as I write this. I'm already getting nervous, because I haven't had anything explode in my lap for a few while now, and it's overdue.

Yeah. Obsessed.

An open letter to Braz:

It's all over.

Matt figured it out. Every bit of it, he figured out as we were driving to the grocery store yesterday: How I don't really go to work in the mornings, but go to Lynchburg instead. He thought at first that the fact that I get hopelessly lost every time we go to Lynchburg to visit is actually an elaborate ruse, to cover the fact that I drive there every day to carry on our torrid affair, but then he realized that my dad sees me in the afternoons, and there's just no way I could drive to Lynchburg and be back before two every day.

But there's the helicopter, isn't there? I don't know how he figured it out, but he did, and now he knows how all the details fit together - my officemates that don't come to work until ten, my frequent "visits" to the other office, my getting lost in Lynchburg because I'm used to navigating from the sky, my insistence that I don't actually have any work to do at work... So now he knows about the affair we've been carrying on every morning.

But that's not why it's over.

It's over because he was so distraught at the news that he let slip about the affair you're having with him, in the afternoons.

You cheap hussy.

So sometimes in the mornings I have this little contest with myself.

See, Matt and I take turns making lunches. And the person who's not making lunch on a given day gets the shower first. So, since it usually takes longer to take a shower than to make lunch, it would seem logical that the person showering first would get up first.

But of course, that's not quite how it happens. Usually what happens is that after the alarm goes off the second or third time, I get up, rub my eyes, and shuffle either into the bathroom or down the stairs, depending on whether I'm supposed to be making lunches or showering first. Once I'm up, apparently there is no need for Matt to stay in bed, so then he gets up and shuffles off down the stairs or into the bathroom accordingly.

Every now and then, when it's Matt's turn to shower first, I decide I'm going to stay in bed until he gets up. Sometimes, this is actually successful.

This morning, Matt decided to snuggle. Now, don't get me wrong - I love my husband, and I greatly enjoy snuggling with him on cozy mornings. But after the fourth time the alarm went off, I started to get antsy that we were running late. But - in the hazy way that the stupidest things can be vitally important before you wake all the way up - I was not going to get out of bed first. So I had to nag him to get up. Subtly, of course, because the idea was also that he do it on his own.

He did eventually get up. But I only get half a point, because nagging, however subtle, is cheating.

Word of the Day: inflammable - easily inflamed or ignited

Oh, this is one of Matt's pet peeves, so I should leave it to him. He'd come up with a few paragraphs that were witty and hilariously funny, and you'd go on about your life without ever using the word "flammable" again. But since he doesn't write a Word of the Day, it's up to me.

Matt insists that "flammable" isn't a word - that it was made up because some idiot worried that even bigger idiots would believe the "in" in inflammable meant not. I think he said he learned this from Strunk and White, but the first time I can remember him raving about it to me was after we'd seen Harlan Ellison rant about it on some TV program, so I always associate it with that.

Me? I use "flammable." My tongue trips over inflammable, and besides, flammable's been a word in common usage for almost two hundred years. The words "radar" and "laser" are much younger than that, and he doesn't have a problem with them. The fact that both flammable and inflammable are in common useage and that they sound like opposites means that there's a lot of confusion.

So in the interest of compromise, here's my public service announcement for today: inflammable and flammable mean the same thing. Don't go jumping through any flaming hoops while wearing an inflammable outfit.