Bookshelf:

Recently Read & Reviewed:

• Dan Raviv, Comic Wars

Currently Reading:

• Margery Allingham, Death of a Ghost

Next Up:

1. Tim Powers, Expiration Date
2. Frederick P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
3. L. E. Modesitt, Ghost of the White Nights
4. Alastair Reynolds, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days
5. Margery Allingham, Dancers in Mourning

Taking Care

Debbi's ankle sprain is doing much better. She stayed off of it for about ten days, and after a follow-up phone call from the doctor's she's started putting some weight on it, and even walking on it a little bit without crutches. Her shoulders, wrists and palms are very tired from using the crutches, but we're optimistic that she'll be able to do away with the crutches in a week or so. The doctor thought it would take about two weeks for her to be back to normal, but what we've read it that it takes three to six weeks to fully heal from a moderate sprain. So next week - which will be three weeks - she should be able to get around without it, but we'll continue to take it easy for a bit thereafter, I think. This might mean no really big hikes in Hawaii, but probably we can see many things either by driving there or by taking some relatively easy walks to get there.

I've been doing my best to make things easy for Debbi during the last couple of weekends. I've picked her up and brought her to my house and been the chauffer during that time. Last weekend we went to a party and over to her friend Lisa's to sit by the pool for the afternoon, so she got to mostly sit down during those while still being out and doing things.

Last Saturday I wanted to surprise her by doing something nice for her. I told her I had an idea and I could either tell her where we were going Saturday evening or surprise her. She chose the surprise. I took her to one of her favorite places, Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, to see the skyline at night. It was foggy, but we could see most of the lower half of the city lights pretty well. I even brought binoculars!

Then we went off to Ghirardelli Square for some late-night ice cream, which was - as always - very good. And then we headed home. A long drive for a couple of stops, but it was fun, and Debbi was very happy, so I was very happy, too!

At the party last Sunday the wife of one of my cow-orkers (Mo) looked at me in my leaf-print polo shirt and said, "Did you buy that yourself?" Not being quite sure what she was getting at, I said, "Yeah, Mervyn's started releasing polo shirts with some patterns earlier this year..." "No, I don't care whether Mervyn's is carrying polo shirts, what I want to know is whether you picked that out yourself," she said. Her husband, Chris, interjected, looking at Debbi and laughing, "Were you within 20 feet of him when he bought the shirt?"

I never think of myself as dressing even a little bit stylishly, but apparently the point was that I looked good! And in clothes I picked out myself! Mo also asked whether I had framed art on my walls that I bought myself (which I do, though Debbi helped me shop for frames for some of them). I said that I hadn't realized that men best come accessorized!

It was a funny conversation. But a flattering one, too.

Last weekend Debbi was mostly trying to stay off her feet altogether. This weekend she was much better, and we went and did some shopping yesterday, and today went to the Mountain View Art & Wine Festival, which was okay although the two vendors I most wanted to patronize weren't there this year. So neither of us ended up buying anything (other than food).

We also met up with Lucy yesterday and getting out trip information for Hawaii. We had a good time catching up, and also asking her questions about the trip, since neither of us have been before and neither of us are frequent travellers (mostly we travel to visit family or friends). We also bought a book my friend Rob recommended to us, entitled Hawai'i: The Big Island Revealed, which seems informative, intelligent, and a little bit sarcastic. A good pickup.

Also, I finally picked up a copy of the game Tigris and Euphrates, which has been one of my favorite modern strategy games since Subrata bought a copy a couple of years ago. It's currently out-of-print and is going for over retail price on eBay lately. But some stores still have it. Alas, it turned out that the copy I bought was missing a couple of pieces, and that a few other pieces didn't quite fit together properly. Fortunately, I took it back and they opened the other copy they had and gave me the missing pieces, and allowed me to mix-n-match the mis-crafted pieces so that all but one of them are now okay (and the other one I can tape or glue easily enough). So all turned out well. Still, it's a little disturbing that I've bought two games this year with missing pieces. Not my year for games, it seems.

(By the way, I put a handful of games up for sale on eBay. Auctions end Wednesday. You can check out my eBay page if you think you might be interested. Once these sell, I plan to start putting some books and comics up for sale. Gotta clean out my closet, you see...)

I think that brings us up to date. Kind of a hectic time, breaking some routines. But, overall (other than the game piece mishap) pretty fun.