Today is being a pleasant day, which after the roller-coaster this week has been (not visible in previous journal entries, I know) is a good change. It's good to feel steady and grounded. It's good to be able to enjoy the warm sun and the occasional breeze and the lovely Chinese lunch I had with Howard. It's good to laugh and joke with my coworkers. It's good to look around the room and see it once, solidly, as the place it is, and not through multiple confused filters, and not as a symbol or an echo or a memory. It's good to be back in reality, instead of wherever I was Monday and again yesterday. That's a useful place, an informative place, but definitely not a nice one. Not where I want to live.

I did successfully restrain myself at the library, picking up only two books: some essays on American literature by various authors, and a book called The Design of Cities which is readable and pleasant and making me glad that I'm in the middle of rereading China Mountain Zhang -- the Zen (or was it Taoist?) architecture thing. The design book has a lot of discussion about how city planners have to think about not just where buildings and walkways go, but the visual impact and sensory experience of moving through the space. The idea that how the space is designed and built will affect what use it's put to much more than its stated purpose will. Fascinating to think about, and also potentially helpful for writing fantastic fiction -- what do the cities in my story look like, anyway?

Fanime is this weekend, a local anime-fandom convention. Jim and I have memberships, but right this second I'm feeling utterly uninterested in going. I have lots of anime stuff and I'm happy with it; there's a few things I wouldn't mind getting, but I'm not in a hurry. And there's so much to do at home; taxes (not so exciting), continuing to organise my books, gardening (more on this below), playing Suikoden, cooking, brushing and adoring the cats, watching the various things TiVo has so kindly recorded for us -- why spend my time driving to Santa Clara to fight my way through crowds in a hotel? Of course, we might still go; I think Jim is somewhat enthused by the idea, and looking around with him would be fun. But I'd rather be at home.

Gardening has become very exciting lately because my iris has decided to bud. For about a year now it's been sitting there in its pot, displaying some spiky green leaves and photosynthesizing quietly. Then last Saturday I went out to water it and it had become two enormous thick stalks with five buds peeking out. Wow. I've started paying attention, and yesterday morning it was waist-high (in its pot), with eight buds, one of which is clearly red-purple around the edges. Did I say wow? It's almost unbelievable to me, that I put this bulb in this pot and watered it occasionally, and now it's about to produce flowers. Now I want to go buy a bunch more pots and soil and bulbs, and plant all of them, in the hopes of more irises next year.