Another frantic day at work, as I bug-fix devotedly while juggling releases. Everyone is tired and stressed and things are generally very weird without any obvious reason why. I'm so glad this is about to be over -- at least two week development cycles are short! But then again, short is why everyone is stressed...

To continue catching people up on my life... let us turn next to the fun and exciting topic of therapy! I continue to see Norm on Wednesdays and to go to group on Sundays, although I haven't been to group in the last two weeks due to travelling & such. It's all very slow and often seems like a waste of my time -- obviously my life is perfect and has no problems -- but I grit my teeth and keep going. I haven't had any exciting nightmares or memories or anything else, which tends to lessen my belief in myself. Silly, I know, but when I'm not a mess I feel like this is all making a big deal out of nothing. Childhood training does tell.

Maybe someday I'll be able to consistently feel like I deserve the time I spend on myself. That would be nice.

The last catch-up item I can think of is that generic category of fun, which includes books and music, computer games, my social life... all that stuff. Then I will be well and thoroughly caught up and can return to the usual daily entries.

So... books! I've been reading a lot, which pleases me. I finished the extremely long Chinese novel and enjoyed it, even getting teary when our heroine died tragically of a broken heart. Annoyingly, the last two volumes were not only written by a different author in the original, but in this version they were translated by a different translator! I'm still not sure if that was a deliberate stylistic decision (to get the flavour of the change in authors across) or if the first translator just got bored or what. For whatever reason, I didn't like the last two volumes nearly as much as the first three, and it's hard to say if it's due to the original writing or the different translator.

I'm continuing to work my way through Cabell's books, although the second was just as snide about women as the first. I have the remaining four in my to-read pile, and am saving them for when I'm in the mood for cynicism. Meanwhile I've just reread eluki bes shahar's Hellflower trilogy, and really had fun with it. Some of the strings she pulls are very obvious to me now, but even so I got involved in the story. I understand the ending this time much better than the first time I read it -- perhaps this has to do with not finishing the third book in the lobby of some theatre at Stanford? Or maybe I just read more carefully this time. I'm not sure.

Music-wise Eno is still getting a lot of airplay, as well as Jon Hassell's The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things By the Power of Sound, which is a marvelous album. I'd love to have more of his work, but I can't seem to find any. Perhaps I should check cdnow. Anyway, when not listening to Eno it's mostly one of my random trance samplers, or sometimes Richard Thompson or June Tabor. Recently I've listened to the album of Vonda Shepard doing songs for Ally McBeal, and that's pretty amusing. Concrete Blonde's Still in Hollywood makes occasional appearances, but I haven't listened to Operation: Mindcrime by Queensryche in quite a while -- just not in the mood for that sort of relentless pain.

Finally, a quick survey of other things in my life. I'm still studying Hebrew with Harold and Chrisber. I'm still playing Ahrounquest every Thursday night (barring nights like tonight in which I am at work until the stars dim), and although the game is sort of fragmented I really enjoy seeing Ebeth (Mike & Susan's 2.8 year old daughter) on a weekly basis. She seems to remember who I am and is willing to interact with me, which is happy.

Outside of Ahrounquest there's not much gaming in my life. No time, and even when I feel like there is time I'd rather be spending it doing something with Jim than gaming. It's strange to feel that way, when gaming was such a strong focus of my life for so long. I do still want to play Mage, though; hopefully Al&Sheryl will be around for New Year's.

Last, but not least; my father & stepmother bought me half of a new computer for Hannukah! A really amazing computer, with impressive high geek numbers. It's at Circuit City waiting for me to pick it up, but I don't know when I'll be able to -- too much work. Maybe tomorrow evening. I plan to play Dungeonkeeper and other such games for hours on end, not to mention being able to read news from home, answer email reliably from home, maybe finally get some writing done... I can't imagine it. I've been using Jim's spare laptop for a long time, but he had to give it back to his former company a bit ago, so we're back to sharing one. It'll be amazing to finally have a computer which is All Mine and doesn't have to be shared with anyone. I expect I'll still let Jim use it... but it's really nice to know that it belongs to me and that I can use it whenever I want. Wow.

So that's my life. Do you feel caught up?