It feels a little goofy to still get excited about my birthday at my age. I'll be 29, which is almost 30, which is almost a grown-up, I think. A lot of my friends barely celebrate their birthdays at all -- I send a card or present, maybe one or two other people do too. Whereas I'm having a small party here on Wednesday, and then when I go to Chicago, I'll be having dinner with people on Saturday. And I've already gotten a card from my folks, and from reader Jim (thank you!), and I anticipate more cards and presents to come. I'll be hurt if any of my close friends forget. I still want birthdays to matter almost as much as they did as a kid, when you anticipated them with pleasure for weeks in advance (though I think the kids who had birthdays during the school year had more fun, dang it!).
Oh well. I'm just stuck with wanting to celebrate it, I think. My friends will just have to cope.
Having a good morning so far. I'm hesitant to say anything this early, but based on Friday and Saturday, I think the increased dosage of Synthroid is working. I was pretty tired Friday, but I did get up at 4 a.m. that day. I woke up today feeling nicely rested and energetic. It'd be so nice to get through a week without feeling unreasonably exhausted in the afternoons/evenings. Fingers crossed.
Today I've been working for about two hours; I'm about to shower, dress, and go to Borders for the day. I've been spending too much time in my apartment; it's time to get out for a bit. Though I did go out to my downstairs neighbors' housewarming party last night, which was pleasant, though I felt unexpectedly shy and hardly talked to anyone I didn't already know. Ah well. It's all these beautiful people -- have I mentioned that everyone in Utah is slim and trim and frighteningly athletic? People spent hours talking about skiing last night.
Before I go, I wanted to tell you all to go find a copy of Such a Long Journey, which should have just come out in video stores. It's based on a novel by Rohinton Mistry, and takes place in India in 1971 (the year I was born!), and is really really good. It'll give you a really good feel for Bombay, I think, and for what Indian families are like, especially the speech patterns when they're talking in English. Neat. I probably ought to watch it a few more times before I write my next story...
...which isn't going to get written with me sitting here. So off I go!
9 p.m. and wide awake and still energetic, with only two cups of tea today. :-)
Didn't get anything written today, but I did work through two more damned chapters of that damned driving workbook. It's got over a 100 pages to fill out! I feel like I'm back in grammar school -- even high school never made me do anything so tedious and mindless. I'd prefer an exam that was three times as rigorous if I could just study and take it, rather than being required to fill out all these stupid pages (which are mindless enough that I can do them even while chatting with Roshani on the phone!)
Ah well. Also finished reading Ruth Jhabvala's Shards of Memory, which was interesting, but not as India-focused as I expected/hoped. One of my projects for this summer is to get much more caught up on South Asian authors; both for the book I'm working on, and because it's embarrassing when people ask me about them and I don't know anything. I've been making reasonably steady progress on that, but I think Jhabvala was a bit of a tangent; the book was much more concerned with America and England. Still good, though -- I don't regret reading it. And the other book I read today, Diana Wynne Jones's Deep Secrets had absolutely nothing to do with India but was great fun nonetheless. Magids and political complexities and love affairs all amid a frantic science fiction convention in England. A blast! Makes me want to go read Bimbos of the Death Sun again...
Not sure what I want to do now; a little too energetic to go to sleep, but not up for writing. I suppose puttering on the computer is probably what will happen. It's a holiday tomorrow, so I can stay up late if I want. (What holiday? you ask in bewilderment. Pioneer Day, of course, I reply. Pioneer what?? It's a Utah thing. State holiday. School's closed. People camping out for the big parade tomorrow. Never mind...)