Bookshelf:

Recently Read & Reviewed:

• Jim Bouton, Ball Four

Currently Reading:

• Alastair Reynolds, Pushing Ice

Next Up:

1. Scott Westerfield, The Killing of Worlds
2. Karl Schroeder, Ventus
3. Sean McMullen, Voyage of the Shadowmoon

Christmas Week Off

I've had a busy little week off. Don't get me wrong, it's been relaxing, but I've kept plenty busy.

Debbi flew back east to visit her family for the week. I decided not to go with her, for the entirely pragmatic reasons that I don't like flying over the holidays anyway, and didn't really want to do a 3000-mile flight just for a 3-1/2 day visit. So instead I stayed home to take care of the cats.

Well, of course I took Debbi to the airport first, on Monday. We got there without a hitch, and her flight went smoothly. Afterwards I went to Berkeley to do some shopping, and bought some CDs.

In the evening I got together with an old friend - whom I'd never met. Terry and I contacted each other circa 1990 when we were both reading (and I was posting to) the rec.arts.startrek newsgroup on USENET. Terry lived in California at that time, and I lived, well, considerably east of there until 1999. When I moved to California, Terry had moved to Seattle. He's recently moved back - but he's in southern California. However, he's also left the computer biz behind and is now a pilot for one of the airlines. So he had an overnight layover in San Francisco (not a common place for a layover, due to the cost of putting up the crew, I guess), and we got together for dinner. He's a good guy, intelligent, funny, and a big ol' smartass - which may be what drew us to each other in the first place.

He also is apparently a baseball fan, although not of the geeky variety like I am, it seems. But we may try to do a baseball outing next time I'm down in SoCal. We'll see!

It was good to meet him - after 15 years.

Spike TV has been doing their usual holiday James Bond marathon, so I've had it on in the background for much of the week. I made a point of catching a film I haven't seen in years (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and one I'm not sure I'd seen at all (The Man With The Golden Gun). I'll probably do a James Bond entry sometime in the next few days.

I've also been busily doing some cleaning around the house, since we ended up with an impressive amount of stuff lying around from Christmas. Plus, there're still quite a few random things from Debbi's move which need to get put away, or put together, or something. So I made some good progress at that, along with running the few errands I had to run this week.

What I didn't make a lot of headway on was my writing, or re-working my baseball software, or (as you can see) writing journal entries. Sigh. I did make some progress at all of those, but not as much as I'd hoped.

I also dropped in on Subrata and Susan on Wednesday to say hi, and had dinner with Cliff last night. A little social contact is good. And I got some (but not a lot) of reading done (mostly of comic books or science fiction magazines).

So it's been a good week. Too short, of course.

Debbi's flight back was delayed by several hours, so as I write this I'm realizing that I need to leave in 20 minutes to go pick her up, as her flight is projected to land in just under an hour.

It'll be good to have her back. I can always keep myself occupied if I need to, but I do like having her around to talk to and do things with. Living in my own head all the time isn't so good for me. (If you don't believe me, go back and read some of my journal entries from 1999.)

I'll try to write again over the weekend! Promise!