In Which Our Heroine Feels Better, Enough for the Leaping

29 February 2004

The office supply store we drove up to was closed on weekends, and my back was not getting any better as the day went on. Timprov pointed out that there was no reason for me to wait until today or Monday to get a massage if they were open yesterday, so I called, and they were, and I got in, and I feel much better. Not all better, but much. I stayed away from the computer last night so as not to re-knot my back in exactly the same patterns right away. It's definitely an improvement today.

In my not-computer time last night, I finished Alec's book, and it was good, and now I'm pondering what to say in the crits. I've started reading something for Stella for crits, too. And a bit more of The Homeward Bounders, which I have to say I just don't like as well as most of Diana Wynne Jones's stuff. The narrative voice is not compelling to me. In fact, it's off-putting. I can't put my finger on why. I just don't really like the narrator very well. But there are several good recipes in the Crescent Dragonwagon cookbook, so this set of library books is not entirely without merit. (The Homeward Bounders isn't without merit, or I'd stop reading it. It's just annoying when I usually like her books and have so many other books I think I'll like around to read.)

In an absolute miracle, the newspaper did not set me off this morning. Not a bit. I'm still worried for Mom's friend in Haiti -- more than a bit worried, actually -- but the idiocy in the paper was all old idiocy rehashed, not worthy of fit-pitching. Not even stated in new and super-idiotic ways. Just...meh. The Treasury Department is being silly about our state quarter, Iraqis are celebrating the same religious holiday they celebrated last year at this time...etc.

The thing I really like about the Strib, though, is that they have this column every Sunday called "If I Ran the Paper," and people's criticisms of how the editors handled things are addressed. And often -- very often, actually -- the editors will say, "You know, you're right, we handled that poorly because we had staffing issues [or X, Y, or Z other reason, or with no excuse at all], and we should have done that better." They assess each complaint and decide whether it was genuinely a mistake or not. Sometimes they say, no, we handled it that way for a reason, and sometimes the people who write in are just on crack. There was a spate of angry letters that the female reporter who had covered Gopher women's basketball all year didn't cover the press conference after the star player's injury. All of them assumed that the "girl reporter" had gotten yanked in favor of one of the "big boys" when it was a "big story." Except that the reporter in question was on a plane back to the Cities after being on assignment elsewhere when that press conference took place and could not physically have made it there, so her boss was a logical choice to substitute in for her. And they could go through that logic and presumably make the complainers sheepish instead of seething with fury.

All right, if I'm going to spend more time at the computer today, it should probably not be journal-related. I will distract you with pictures of the Roo so you don't notice me slipping out the back way.

Stella and Roo. This is the reading of the Fuzzy Yellow Duck book; we are preparing to say, "Sticky! EwwwwwwWWWwwww!" And then laugh hysterically.

The Matchbox truck got cut off the bottom of the picture, and the lighting is not the best. But still, that's a pretty cute Roo, not to mention a pretty happy Auntie Mrissa.

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