Last night I went through my CDs and put aside an enormous stack to bring into work today, including some Indigo Girls and various Sondheim musicals -- but then I forgot them this morning, in the excitement of getting out of the house half an hour early. Not that I needed to, but yesterday and today I have finally been waking up when I want to (which is at 7:50, right before Jim leaves) instead of an hour or more later. Getting up right before eight and having time to read, to play some Asheron's Call, to pet the cats -- it makes an enormous difference in how I feel in the rest of the day. I hope hope hope I can keep it up. And that tomorrow I remember the CDs.

The british schoolboy problem (a constant bloody nose) could possibly be solved by more humidity. It happens every winter, but seems worse this year than it has been in a while. Further study is required.

Now I run off to have lunch with Joe Decker, but I shall return. For you, however, no time will pass -- the magic of text.

I'm back from lunch, full of yummy Thai food. For dessert I had really splendid coconut ice cream, served in a glass bowl shaped like a fish. The ice cream was like nothing i'd ever tasted before, very rich but not too sweet or heavy, with an interestesting texture from the tiny pieces of coconut in it. Very nice. I wonder if they make it themselves?

Now that I'm back, I'm listening to a sampler CD which coworker Lee loaned me quite a while ago. It's nice, largely instrumental but with occasional pleasant vocal pieces, mostly celtic but with some other things mixed in. I'm nearing the end, and there's only been one track I skipped -- a blues piece, which wasn't bad in & of itself but was too cognitively dissonant coming after a fiddle track.

My dad called me back yesterday; it turns out that they weren't home when I called due to being in Las Vegas. He had sad news; one of his dogs died of pneumonia over the weekend. Feh. And as if that weren't enough, Liralen had to put her wonderful dog Fezzik to sleep yesterday, as his lymphoma finally caught up with him after a long and valiant fight. I cried as I read her entry about it, remembering all too well the night that Michiru died, and feeling so deeply how much it hurts to be helpless while someone you love dies. There's some good, though, in knowing that it's a grief that lessens slowly over time, and that it doesn't scar the heart. A really complicated mix of emotions, all of it.

Speaking of Michiru, I should talk about Hayama! It's now safe to do so, as we took him to the cardiologist on Saturday morning, and after forty-five minutes of ultrasounding his heart she said, "Well, he seems to have a hole between the left and right ventricles, but it's so tiny I can't get a good fix on it. All of his blood flow is normal. Everything looks great. I am 90% certain that the tiny hole is what's causing the murmur, in which case your cat is absolutely fine and you should quit worrying."

And -- wow. I hadn't realised how much I was worrying until we got the good news -- until it sank in, really. Saturday I was very genki about it, but it wasn't until I woke up Monday morning with my body entirely relaxed and felt all anticipatory about going into work that I realised how much worrying about Hayama had been impacting me. I've been holding all my emotional mucles clenched really tight, waiting for the blow I was sure was coming, and now that I can believe he's safe they're all relaxing. The results... sporadic crying, extreme relief, bouts of intense cheerfulness, but most of all a steady sense of goodness, that all is right in the world and that anything which comes up can be coped with. It makes such a big difference in everything to feel this way. Now I know, I guess, why things have seemed so emotionally distant, why my birthday party this year was nice but not intensely wonderful as it often is... things like that.

Ambar has a nice picture of Hayama as a kitten. He still looks much like that, except a bit bigger. I have other pictures on my computer at home, taken both with the old digital camera and with the amazing new one Jim bought me for my birthday -- it was a birthday of silver shiny things, since he also bought me a TiVo. Anyway, if I ever become sufficiently organised I will upload some of those pictures here, so you may see my fuzzy kitten in all of his green-eyed glory.