Oh -- well, add another flower to that list of flowers -- purple larkspur. Isn't that a beautiful name for a flower? Larkspur. It sounds like spring.
It was kind of funny the way he gave them to me. We were snowed in -- Kev's car had been buried deep by two consecutive snowfalls and snowplows dumping extra snow. The grocery store was significantly far away that we didn't feel like walking there. So we ordered from WebVan. I adore WebVan. I want to live in New York or Chicago or San Francisco just for WebVan alone. We sat on the couch and used Netscape to browse for groceries and shampoo and a toothbrush because I forgot mine. It was appallingly domestic, in a high-tech sort of way. :-) This was Wed. evening, I think -- Friday morning the groceries arrived, along with a bouquet of larkspur. He'd logged back on and added them to the order. He seems to not be sure if ordering flowers through WebVan really counts, but I say it doesn't count how they got there as long as they get there. And if he'd trudged barefoot through the snow fifteen blocks each way to get them, then he'd probably have caught pneumonia and died, which might have been terribly romantic in some sense, but not any sense I care to know about.
Lessee -- what else? We played a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic: III, one of the computer games he gave me for Christmas. Like two straight days worth. I get so addicted to those things. It was pretty hard, too! And we slept a lot. And I read a little. And I stopped by Roshani's for a bit and saw them and baby Zoe -- she's bigger! Only three weeks since I last saw her, but she's noticeably larger and more coordinated and she actually looks at you now. How astonishing. It has become more evident that Roshani and Tom actually made a new person. Very cool.
I didn't make a new person this weekend, but I did make two CD's, which is probably enough accomplishment for a weekend, really. I met up with Joe Griffin, who had happened to read in this journal that I was trying to record a CD, and he skilfully and smoothly helped me record both the Esthely Blue CD and the as-yet-untitled one. I have vague fantasies of having both ready for Valentine's Day, but that may be a bit dubious, since I have no artwork ready for the second one, and I think the production time is something like 4-6 weeks. We'll see. It was fun doing the recording, but tiring too, especially since I'm still sick. Hopefully the rasp in my voice isn't too evident on the recordings.
Monday I arrived in New York; since then I've hung out with Alex, had dinner with Shmuel, slept and read. I'm re-reading Tigana now, and I just finished Rhapsody, the first in a new epic fantasy series. I liked it, though it was definitely very uneven. Complex ideas, and good scope, but a lot of minor problems that her editor probably should have caught. Oh well. I think George R.R. Martin still has my vote for best current epic fantasy; I'm going to try to find Alex a copy of the first in that series today, if I can find a bookstore.
That 'if' was a joke, of course -- this is New York. I was taking the train back from meeting Shmuel around 11 last night, then walking a few blocks to Alex's. The city felt incredible. A cool night, but not too cold, and the streets were full of people. I probably heard three different languages within one block -- I find that invigorating. London feels like that, sometimes; I'm not sure any other city in the U.S. really does. San Francisco could, but it's too mellow. Chicago is too inland. I suspect New York is unique. (Of course, the others are too. :-)
Anyway, my fingers are getting tired, so I'm going to take a break. While my computer's in the shop, I'm using Kev's old laptop, the one with the teeny-tiny keyboard. It hurts my fingies. I also have started going through the old journal entries and converting them to day-by-day format. I just did January 1999, and it seems to take about half an hour to do a month's worth. It's going to be a while before I get through all of '98, '97, and '96! But it seems like a good project to get started on, and an appropriate way of celebrating the five year anniversary of the journal -- making it more accessible and easier to read. I know the reverse chronological months are particularly irritating; when I get a chance, I'll switch those over to forward chronology too. Oh wait -- C.J. said something about writing a program to do that for me. C.J., let me know if you meant that -- it'll definitely save me some effort.
C.J. also offered to put together a Palm version of the diary, which apparently would take about 2.8 MB. I don't know if that would interest anyone -- what do you guys think? Maybe we could just do it year by year? It seems like it would be pretty difficult to update it constantly, but annually should be feasible, right? I'm just not sure if anyone would use it...
C.J. also did some word counts, which I offer here for your amusement:
- 1995-6: 71,387
- 1997: 85,879
- 1998: 94,386
- 1999: 119,301
- 2000: 148,246
- Total: 519,199
Please do send me your favorite entry. I suspect I'll just keep collating these on my main diary page, but I only have three so far, and it would be nice to have a few more on the 22nd. I don't actually expect you to go through the entire five years of journal in the next two days, y'know. :-) Feel free to just skim the last few months, or whatever you have time for. You can always revise later if you decide you have a new favorite.