Hello, everyone. A bit…

Hello, everyone. A bit of a rushed morning; I got attacked by bugs in the middle of last night, so I got up and dragged me and my comforter to the living room couch, where I slept like a log, through the alarm going off in my room, until Ian woke me up half an hour late. Not a terrible crisis, but it does mean the morning is a little more rushed than usual.

But now I'm dressed and my biscuits are baking (planned to stick a couple in with the Ethiopian veggie curry from Sunday night and take to school for lunch) and I just have a few more crits left that I think I can finish off between classes. So I'm okay. Oh, I should pack my bag. Hang on...

Okay, packed. I think we may be starting _The Bluest Eye_ in survey class, which should provide for an interesting discussion. Honestly, I've lost track a bit of where we are in the syllabus. :-) I should also be getting another batch of student papers. I'm getting quite fond of these gals...funny how you get to know them through their work.

Must remember to put "Leek Soup" in the mail today! Marion's reading period is very very short.

It's grey and cool out, but my spirits are still up, thank goodness. Maybe it's the biscuits baking. :-) Oh, I did want to tell you about another Tiptree book I read. It's called _The Starry Rift_, and has three linked stories in it. The second two were fine stories, but the first one -- oh, the first one encapsulated everything I read sf for growing up. Here -- I'm going to quote the first paragraphs at you, and even if she is a blonde, she's me, or the me I was at fifteen or so...

"Heroes of space! Explorers of the starfields!
Reader, here is your problem:
Given one kid, yellow-head, snub-nose-freckles, green-eyes-that-stare-at-you-level, rich-brat, girl-type fifteen-year-old. And all she's dreamed of, since she was old enough to push a hologram button, is heroes of First Contacts, explorers of far stars, the great names of Humanity's budding Star Age. She can name you the crew of every Discovery Mission; she can sketch you a pretty accurate map of Federation space and number the Frontier Bases; she can tell you who first contacted every one of the fifty-odd races known; and she knows by heart the last words of Han Lh Han, when, himself no more than sixteen, he ran through alien flame-weapons to drag his captain and pilot to safety, on Lyrae 91-Beta..."

Okay, I'll stop there, but it keeps going, and just gets better and better. I'll warn you that it's not entirely a happy story -- I was sobbing hopelessly at one point, but it felt so right...ah, I can't explain it. If you were one of those kids who would have given anything to go into space, even if you had to be a janitor, or hell, *ballast*, then you'll understand. And if you weren't, well, maybe if you find this story and read it you'll understand us a little.

You know, if they came to me right now and said, "We've got a mission into the uncharted depths and what we think is a fuzzy radio signal coming at us but there's only a ten percent chance of return, do you want it?" I think I'd grab it. I don't think I'd even hesitate -- and I can't explain that at all, except that maybe I'm just nuts. Maybe everyone who wants to be a pioneer is nuts. :-) Some kinds of craziness, I think the race needs a little of. Just a little.

Have a lovely day, my dears.

11:00 p.m. Well, Ginu has signed off on my thesis. One down, two to go.

Heather came by for dinner with me and Ian; she's sounding better, which is good. Losing a job can be so jarring...and job-hunting has got to rank in the top five most-depressing activities. (Please don't send me a list of ten things that are more depressing; I can't cope.)

I'm sorry -- do I sound a bit touchy? I'm feeling a bit touchy, I guess. Difficult conversation with Kevin; not bad, but difficult. Sometimes I feel like I'm steering without a rudder, y'know? Or, more accurately, I thought I was having a nice quiet sail on Lake Merritt in a big boat with my teacher keeping an eye on me from the motorboat on a lovely sunny day, and instead I find out that I'm out in the Bay...no, I'm not in the Bay, I'm in the ocean with outdated charts...no, it's not even our ocean, I've got the charts for our ocean, but this is a parallel universe ocean that is just slightly subtly different, except where it's drastically, dramatically different, which is where the big pointy rocks come in, oh yes, and did I mention the storm, the storm and me on this itty bitty boat 'cause the nice big boat has shrunk! and it's just me with no teacher in sight and a alternate universe ocean and a tiny boat and a torn sail so I'm using the damn tiller to scull the stupid boat and oh yeah, the rain and the wind and lightning and the thunder and the memory of this thin, distant spark of light that I *think* might be that lovely lighthouse on the shore that I saw so many days, months, years ago.

Yes, *that*'s a better metaphor.

Well, more descriptive, anyway.

Heh. I bet you're all ruing the day I signed up for sailing class.

It made me feel better, anyway. Thanks the gods and little fishes for writing. (Hey, fish -- I forgot to put a whale in there. Maybe I should go back and...just kidding.)

You would think that after six years,
thousands of miles,
millions of tears,
and a few smiles,
I would have found something(one) new
to cry about.

Aw, don't get mad at him, guys. The last time I complained about how things were going with Kevin, a couple of you offered to send him nasty e-mail on my behalf. I'm becoming more and more convinced these days that much of my misery is self-inflicted. I've got to figure out how to break my bad habits...

I bite my nails too.

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