I'm hardly back but that I'm gone again, at least in the sense of my journal. Next Tuesday very late (2230?) I leave for Baltimore, there to spend five days at WorldCon with Earl, Marith, and Trip. I'm looking forward to this, but I wish it was still about two weeks away... I have so many other things I ought to do before going on vacation! Like finishing my screens. Why did I ever think working to a deadline was somehow satisfying?

Chrisber, Marith, and Trip are going to Alaska today (and for some reason I keep typing 'Colorado' instead of 'Alaska' -- why?), and are picking me up in about an hour to feed me lunch and pick up the present I made for Kit. It's a very fine present, but I can't talk about it here because she hasn't gotten it yet. I stayed up too late last night making it, and it was worth it even if she hates it.

I'm not usually so pleased with things of my own creation. Bear with me if I'm insufferable. (And yeesh, now it sounds like a much bigger deal than it is! It's a small thing. But I put it together.)

My code is doing things which are incomprehensible to me, and Rachel is off helping Chet (cute young intern who will vanish back to SLO & CalPoly in another month) with something. I sit here staring at it, listening to Before and After Science for the second or third time so far today. It continues to have internal logic.

I'm reading a bunch of different things, all library books. A bunch of essays on Hamlet. A book of literary anecdotes. Some really sentimental historical-fiction written by a woman whose grandmother married a famous Russian. The second volume of The Story of the Stone is waiting for me, but I'm holding off on it; I want to get through the more rigorous books first, and leave that & the Anne Tyler novel I picked up (The Clockwinder? Something like that) for later. I'm not sure when later is, though. After WorldCon, probably.

WorldCon is next week. I fly late Tuesday, I arrive Wednesday, I sleep some & then the fun begins. On the plane I am planning to take sf, to get me into the right mood for the con. I need to finish Startide Rising (yes, still), and want to read The Uplift War as well. Plus I have some John Ford waiting for me -- I want to reread most of From the End of the Twentieth Century. And then there's the Ian McDonald I haven't touched ... oh, it will be a great feasting upon sf, yes, yes.

Maybe I do need a vacation.

It is many hours later, and I am very close to being able to check in my code. Very close. Perhaps an hour. Then I will come in Sunday and put in four-five hours of work on the larger of the other two screens I need to finish. I still doubt I'll hit my deadline (everything done before I leave), but I may get a lot closer than I expected.

Jim and I are supposed to go to dinner at St. Michael's Alley tonight; I've been wanting to for a few weeks, but things kept coming up, and it's not a good place for large crowds, which is what usual weekend meals end up being. Last time I was there (which was October, with Czr, right before he went to Wisconsin -- talk about a rush of memory -- I wonder if I could reread my fall entries without being confused and amazed and terrified?) they had a beautiful cheese sampler with lots of roasted garlic. I love roasted garlic.

After dinner I want to try watching My So-Called Life on Chrisber's VCR, since our VCR doesn't like the tape. I have Chrisber's house keys so I can look in on Velcro Podkitty Anklefear, (the only cat ever mistaken for a soccer ball) while Chrisber is in Alaska. Except it's nearly 8pm, and the database is not pleased with me, and I do so much want to be done with this tonight instead of Monday. So perhaps by the time I get home I will merely fall over thump without any further visual stimulation.

Listening to "Cordoba" for the first time, from Wrong Way Up. Intensely weird, pleasantly disturbing -- I want to keep listening to it. But now, I will write code. I will finish my audience buttons. I will check it in. I will go home.