In Which Whinings and Pinings are Predicted

5 August 2003

This is how I feel this morning: I dreamed I threw up, repeatedly, and when I woke up I felt the need to check and make sure I hadn't. Woooo! Yeah. That's the sort of morning when going back to bed just doesn't help.

On the up side, our realtor is already incapable of using the second "a" in my name, which is comforting somehow. Cal and Bobbie always call me M'ris, so I'm not entirely surprised that someone who knows of me through them does, too.

Yesterday, we discovered once again that when it comes to libraries, I cannot count. I showed up for one book: Raphael Carter's The Fortunate Fall. I had put a hold on it, and several other books, and it was the only one that showed up in time (because my other books had to be returned). So I was going to go get this one book and leave. My reasoning was that then I could read The Fortunate Fall (which, in fact, I have started to do) and then have it ready to return whenever one of my other holds came in. What I had forgotten is that I'm leaving to go house-hunting in less than three weeks, which means that all my library books will be due before we leave anyway. So it won't matter if I have a jumble of due dates, because they'll all be due before we go. Or else they won't show up until the day after we leave and will get taken off the hold and I will be sad. But not too sad, because I just don't have enough faith in this library to let them make me too sad. Anyway, my clever trick for not getting any more library books was to leave the library list at home. Then I wouldn't know what to go look for! I could just pick up my one book and go! Except...the new arrivals section is right there up front, and there were three novels and a short story collection that looked like I really should read them....

The Fortunate Fall is good so far, though. That part of the plan is going swimmingly.

In addition to the plethora of errands and household tasks from yesterday, I worked on "Heart-Shaped Hole" and a new story, "Making Alex Frey." Because -- once again! -- what I really need is more new stories. But this one isn't entirely new: the idea has been sitting in the idea file since before I started this journal, and it just took a particular theme to bring it to life, and it may get done by an anthology deadline...one hopes. We'll see.

Today, I'm not going anywhere. I'll make phone calls, I'll write, I'll probably clean a few things here and there, and I may bake. (I haven't baked in awhile. Haven't felt the urge. It seems to be returning.) But I have no need to deal directly with outside people today. Especially people who attempt to hit on me by telling me I look like Sophie Marceau ("the princess lady from 'Braveheart'"). Very, very silly. Here's me. Here's Sophie Marceau. Did you have any trouble telling the difference?

Ah well. I'm really enjoying Tori Amos' "Scarlet's Walk" -- it's my favorite since "Little Earthquakes." And there will be new Blues Traveler soon. And that's good. I hope.

When I said that I wouldn't be whining and pining for The Stinking Rose, one of you reader-people asked what Bay Area food I would be whining and pining for. House of Nanking, I think. That place rocks. And also the moo goo gee from Long Life (because I learned to make the dragon breath). And ummmm...oh, Pasta Primavera with their happy tomato stuff for on the bread and their happy happy pastas. And also Mondo Gelato, until we get one in Minneapolis or until I find out where the good gelato is (but I get the sense that Peg Kerr knows). And maybe the pretzels from Black Diamond up in Walnut Creek.

There are some good places around here, don't get me wrong. But -- take the Mexican place we sometimes go to. It's fine. It's tasty Mexican food. I have never had anything there that made me weep with joy. Never even close. The Thai place near us is good Thai food, but they have Thai food in Minneapolis. North China is some tasty Chinese food, but there are enough Chinese restaurants in the greater Twin Cities metro area that I'm convinced I'll find one that has non-sucky orange beef, and the rest of the North China food is in that "tasty, fine" category. (Some otherwise acceptable places make orange beef that's just sucky. Just offensively bad.) And so on, and so on. I've had good sandwiches at the University Coffee Café and good Italian at Bella Luna or Mossimo (in Walnut Creek), but not such good sandwiches and Italian that I don't foresee replacements. Zachary's spinach and mushroom pizza rocks, but we know of at least...eh...four different rocking pizza places in the Cities already. It's almost getting to the point where I don't want to try more pizza places because I already like too many of them. (Almost.) And Ghirardelli sundaes are really good, but they're reproducible if we get the urge really strongly. They're not like Bridgeman's where the ice cream itself is the thing.

And Trader Joe's has been good, but mostly as a Cub/Lund's/Byerly's substitute, and they have Wild Oats and I believe Whole Foods in the Cities for our hippie food supplies as well as the awesome "normal person" grocery stores (which carry a fair amount of hippie food anyway). So for groceries, I'll mostly miss cheap fresh salmon, which we occasionally get here. Like last night. We made it with C.J.'s raspberry infusion sauce, and it was good, and we finished off the bottle of raspberry infusion, between the sauce and Mark and me each having a glass of it. So we're not moving that bottle of raspberry infusion, which would be coals to Newcastle, since it's from Saint Croix Vineyards.

Er. Sidetrack, sorry. Maybe my cruddy-feeling morning is making this the wrong time for me to discuss this question. The fish tacos down in Half Moon are certainly good, and I'd like to get back to Bistro E. Europe sometime...but I don't know. I'm just not that attached to a lot of the places here, at least not that I can predict in advance. Things like the Flying Fish Grill in Half Moon and Bistro E. seem like vacation food to me, not something I have any expectation of eating in my normal life.

Eh. I'll tell you all when I get there, how's that? I'll make sure to take time out from reveling to let you know.

Blech. I'm at that stage where I know I should do the next load of laundry, but that's sheets, which I don't know if I want to take off the bed, because then I can't go lie on it, and we don't have a couch to lie on any more. I need to write back to the realtor about our ideas and parameters, but I don't want to babble to her about cool cloths and comfy pillows, and that's what I really want in my house right now. I'm getting the dizzy fireflies sometimes, so I'm going to wimp out and make myself chamomile tea and go lie down. Have a good Tuesday.

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