Sunday, 14 December 1997:

Scattershot

Today I got together with my friend Karen. We had lunch, and then I helped her build some shelving for her closet in her new apartment. She's quite short of space in her new home, and her landlord said he wouldn't mind her adding some shelving, so we tromped off to buy some wood, and then did some measuring, sawing, and hammering until it was all in place. The house is actually quite well-built, as the plaster walls took some real effort to ram the nails into to hold up the brackets.

All-in-all, it was maybe a tenth as much work as building my bookcases, and there were two of us, but it was fun nonetheless. Karen was pleased with the results; I noticed the same look in her eye that I had when I finished both my bookcases and, earlier, my CD cases, enjoying just looking at the fruits of our labors. Physical craft can be that way.


I'm working on wrapping Christmas presents, as I want to get them in the mail (or UPS) to my family by Tuesday at the latest. Christmas is less than two weeks away!

This evening I went downtown and finished The Uplift War. I enjoyed it a lot more than Startide Rising, but I didn't think it was great. Indeed, I think it will be a while before I read anything else by Mr. Brin, as much as I enjoyed reading The Postman.


I've been having some rather heavy and unpleasant dreams lately. One dream involved someone apparently suffering from a terminal illness and repeatedly - and failing - to commit suicide. Another involved one of my favorite bookstores suddenly changing from a stylish, antiquarian used bookstore to a modern, upscale Barnes-n-Noble-type place. When I went in to check out the SF section, all it contained were Star Wars tie-ins and role-playing games.

I give very little credence to dream interpretation, but these sorts of things to tend to suggest that I'm under a lot of mental stress, which I am. They're not especially conducive of a good night's sleep, either. Sigh.


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