In Which Our Heroine Wanders, But Not Physically

29 August 2004

I am not cooking anything more complicated than Kraft dinner today. This does not mean I regret yesterday's kitchen stuff. Far from it. I'm just done for the moment. I did what I was doing, and now I'm done. And we don't have too unbearably many leftovers, and for some things no leftovers at all.

Stella and I keep doing what friends do: we seem to both remain convinced that what we do for the other person isn't much, but what the other person does for us is awfully generous. Some people are happiest in friendships where they feel superior to the other person; some in friendships where they feel equal. I'm happiest when I feel like my friends are so much niftier than I am. It also works well when they feel the reverse. This is the Platonic, un-obnoxious version of, "No, you're so cute!" "No, you're so cute!" "No, you are!"

At least, I hope it's un-obnoxious.

I'm in a very mentally wandery mood today. I'm in the mood that starts a dozen projects and doesn't finish one of them. I'm trying to temper this with some attention to the list, but so far this is easier said than done. It's one of my days off, but that means that I'm bouncing among laundry and this journal entry and a letter to my grandparents, rather than between chapters or stories.

So, what's important to cover?

Bat news: Mark and Mike chased it out last night, and I haven't heard that it's gotten back in again.

Picture news: still need to reinstall software, cross fingers, mix potions by full moon, install alternate software if necessary. Now the incentive is to show people David with an octopus on his head and Roo with the nunny babbit, as well as the 75th birthday party pics and the wedding pics.

Con countdown: day after tomorrow. At least, that's when I get to Boston; the first con-related activity in which I'm participating is Wednesday's Red Sox game. It'll be interesting. I'm not alone there: there will be a Timprov and a Stella from here and more online people than one can shake a stick at. (Hmm. I suppose if you backed away from the convention center far enough....) I won't be spending most of my time with any one person that I know of, but there will be people. The number of people I will be looking for is truly staggering, and I think the only sensible approach may be to assume that anyone I don't already recognize as someone I'm not looking for is someone I am looking for.

I will attempt not to greet every single person I pass with, "It's you!"

It took me a moment to correctly parse one of Stella's comments last night, when she was referring to "a horde of drooling Klingons." It didn't immediately hit me that we are going into a situation wherein that term did not mean "socially clingy people," but in fact referred to people with prosthetic foreheads on their real heads. (Having a rock to wind a string around after Michelle and Scott's wedding, I have no need of a prosthetic forehead on my real head.) I keep telling people not to be scared of the Klingons, but it's an adjustment. It's an adjustment not to be able to use book references as private code with friends in a public place. It's a good adjustment, especially in the latter case, but still an adjustment.

Half of the adjustment is going into a situation where people care about the same things as you do. The other half if not assuming they care about all the same things as you do, or as much, or handle it in similar ways.

I'm eyeing my links and my friendslist and my e-mail inbox, contemplating the number of people who will be voices and faces and gestures and smells in my head two weeks from now, not just names and words. I'm eyeing my submissions log and thinking even scarier thoughts of the same.

It'll be good. I hope it will. I bet it will.

I'm going to go think of something else now.

Back to Novel Gazing.

And the main page.

Or the last entry.

Or the next one.

Or even send me email.