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DowntimeAfter a weekend at Disneyland, and then half a weekend in Napa, it was nice to have a weekend free of plans (modulo Friday's baseball game) and to be able to spend a bunch of it lazing around. Especially since I'd contracted another cold on Thursday and was feeling kind of worn-out. Saturday we did some shopping: Debbi came over in the morning and after a lunch outing we made a run to Costco. After relaxing at home for a while, I dragged Debbi off for some shopping. At San Jose's Recycle Bookstore I picked up a small stack of stuff, including a couple books on my list that have been eluding me. Turns out I now own every Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel save for two, and those two are recent. At some point I want to get through all of them, partly as a project, and partly because there are a lot of novels and authors there I've never read which I either want to or feel I ought to. After that we went by Rasputin Music, in Campbell near where I used to live. As I've mentioned before, I've been after some neo-progressive rock groups. I ended up picking up Transatlantic's CD Bridge Across Forever, which you know is true prog-rock because it has 25-minute tracks which change both time and key abruptly during their course. It's pretty good, though, with some nice melodies which ebb and flow through the course of the song, and good performances by the musicians. The music is a bit on the derivative side, being particularly evocative of early Marillion and the late-80s Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe stuff, but it's fun nonetheless. I'll probably pick up their first album at some point, and I also want to get something by Spock's Beard. I also lucked into a used copy of Renaissance's 1977 album, Novella which has some of their best work on it, particularly the lovely "Can You Hear Me?" Annie Haslam's voice still holds up after all these years. We rounded out the day with an evening at Cafe Borrone. I finished reading Maureen F. McHugh's novel China Mountain Zhang for the Kepler's SF book discussion group. It's a tedious and derivative novel set in a near-future world in which Chinese socialism dominates the world. That would be fine if the writing style were not so bland, the characters so featureless, and the story so plotless. Unless you have a special hankering to read SF novels about gay characters, don't bother with this one. I'm happy to be back reading Donald Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis, which is clever, idea-packed and a lot of fun.
 Sunday we took advantage of the nice table and chairs I bought for my patio last week, and we made pancakes and sausage and ate them in the sun and fresh air. I ran the pump for the stream for my pond, and we tortured the cats by eating yummy food while they were stuck inside. Poor fellows! They were remarkably well-behaved though. We let them out in a supervised manner from time to time, but Newton's rather timid about it and Jefferson's too interested in eating the plants. It being Mother's Day, I gave my Mom a call to wish her a good one. We caught up on the news at both ends, and talked about my planned visit later this summer. A number of things have changed around the old neighborhood, which I'll have to check out. Otherwise we mostly puttered around home for the afternoon, watching an episode of 24 which I have on tape (we're about 12 episodes behind at the moment; this weekend I'd like to catch up on 2 or 3 episodes, plus a few West Wings). Debbi took off around 6:30 and I headed off to my book discussion group, and wrapped up the weekend with a meal at my favorite Chinese restaurant. A weekend of downtime was just what the doctor ordered!
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