9 May 2000

Bah.

Yesterday was a good day, despite the fact that I was too tired to think straight for most of it. The air conditioning repair people called promptly in the morning, and made an appointment to come out in the afternoon. I spent most of the day on IM and Hotmail, frantically sending e-mail back and forth about the Hall. My dentist appointment was odious, but not unbearable. (I finally made him write it on the charts: "Double-dose of lidocaine necessary.")

And, of course, I spent the evening on the Hall, which was fun. Zoya got to make up with Marten, sortof, kinda... Well, you had to be there. She's still mad at him, but since he admitted immediately and without prompting that he'd been an idiot, she's forgiven him. And she's starting to get some ideas about how to deal with the ghost that's riding him.

Even the idle chatter after the Hall was good. Just to see what he'd say about it, I sent Braz a little bit of Hall-based almost-erotica I'd written over the weekend (certain events made the bit I'd written completely out of the question, but I thought it was still a pretty moving little vignette) and he had the same reaction to it that he'd had to my first attempt (the one that was vague enough to become part of the story), which was, "Wow." There's nothing quite like a "Wow" to brighten a writer's day, even if I'm only a writer when it suits me.

He confessed that he was tempted to write something, himself, and I tried to encourage him. Some of the writing tucked away on his website is pretty darned impressive. This morning, I found his effort in my mailbox, and damn but I shouldn't be reading stuff this warm at work (but I'll probably re-read it at least ten times today, and the Writing Beast is stirring in its cage, wanting to write a response)...

And over on the other channel, Kurg was going through old things in preparation for his upcoming move, and mentioned a stack of poetry he'd written, which reminded me of the poem he wrote me once. There's nothing quite like the memory of having poems written to you, either.

All in all, quite a nice evening.

This morning was slightly less nice, since we found out that the temporary fix the air conditioning folks put in until the part they needed arrived isn't working. In fact, I'm tempted to say that the problem is the same one we had last year, since Matt noticed this morning that no water has been coming out of the outdoor drain pipe...

So if I don't hear from them by about 10 this morning, I'll be calling them back. Hmph.

Today promises to be another weird one, with aching boredom at work (I have a project, but it's a tedious management thing) followed by a busy evening. Because of my dentist appointment, Matt and I didn't get to the grocery store yesterday, so we're going tonight. And Jeff and Karen wanted me to join them for yet another off-Hall session (oh, twist my arm). I'd been hoping that one could be via e-mail, since the only really free night I have this week is tonight, but they really wanted to do it on IRC. So I'll be back online tonight.

Word of the Day: millefleur - having a pattern of flowers and plants

More French. Ah, well I'm feeling magnanimous this morning. I'll talk about furniture instead of raving.

I want a new couch. Actually, I want a whole new living room set. Our current set is a couch and chair given us by some friend who were getting hand-me-downs from some other friends, and while it's a huge step ahead of the ancient and much-abused couch we had before, in terms of both aesthetics and comfort, I'd really like something newer.

The problem is, I am perhaps overly picky about designs, and overly sensitive to what I perceive as the natural male desire to disdain and avoid millefleur designs around the house. I carefully avoid buying "girly" sheets, to Matt's occasional frustration. (He says he doesn't care, for petesake, and just buy something.)

I can understand his irritation with me over the sheets. We don't spend much time in the bedroom during the day, and at night, the lights are out and our eyes (usually) are closed. But we do spend a lot of time in the living room, and it's important to me that we both like our living room furniture. But I think we've got different ideas about what we want. I wish we could both draw - then we could sketch our our ideal design, and work toward a compromise. But as it is, we've got to wander around furniture stores and look at things and try to explain to each other why we don't like them, which is imprecise at best.

So far, we haven't disagreed much over designs - I'm not especially fond of flowery things, myself. But what happens if I do encounter a flowery design I really like? It could happen. Do I tell Matt and risk him agreeing to something he doesn't care for just to keep me happy? Do I indicate mild approval and hope he agrees? Do I keep my mouth shut and hope we find something else?

Ah, the married life...