So despite the fact that I've never actually met Ceej, nor exchanged more than a few pieces of personal email with her, the lack of her diary in the last few days (as she is now in Seattle, doing battle with words) has been noticable. Not in any frightening psychotic way, but I am aware in the back of my head that 'someone I like talking to isn't around'. Amazing how easy it is to turn someone's words, read by many, into a sense of a dialogue between two people.

Do I sound scary despite myself? I don't want to. I'm not about to go stalk any of the diarists I read and insist that they be my friend. I'm just amazed at how easily a remote voice seems like a close one.

It's been a quiet week, aside from my mad dash up to the Dar Williams concert. Work apparently decided to make up for Monday by being extremely low-stress both yesterday afternoon and this morning. As I write this I'm bouncing between my email window (where I've almost caught up on diary-l flamage) and the two windows where I'm editing someone's .cshrc to be a thing of beauty that'll hopefully work until I'm safely off to another job.

Ahrounquest was adequate last night, although not particularly interesting. We got Stag-Boy brought back to life, and Butterflies had a fun conversation with the boy who has a crush on her. Everyone was distracted by Seth & Cindy, who were visiting from Oklahoma. They'd gone to Tech around the same time Czr/Jim/Jeremy/Rachel had (this is a span of quite a few years, actually, since I think Jim was a frosh when Jeremy/Rachel/Czr were juniors, but to be honest I don't really bother to keep track) and then both ended up in grad school in Norman, at the University of Oklahoma. My hometown.

Seth is getting a PhD. in CompSci, and Cindy in Meteorology -- and via a summer seminar she met Jeanne Schneider, whose family & home was the focus of much gaming and hanging out for my entire junior high existance -- and then I found the net and got too busy to game very often. Jeanne then apparently introduced her to the rest of the Norman horde, so now these people who went to Tech with my friends in California are hanging out & gaming with my friends in Oklahoma. The world of intelligent gaming geeks is clearly smaller than I ever imagined.

Yes, I know I live in a fairly small circle, but I _like_ it.

Earl wrote for me. He wrote for me several days ago, but I wasn't sure I wanted to say anything about it ... it was something too special at first for me to feel easy sharing it. Now some of the initial goopiness has worn off, so I am now pleased to tell you all that he turned his interesting dream/idea into a shortshort story because I kept insisting that he do so.

Words, words, words. How do I convey how flattered I was? And, moreover, how good it made me feel? He might have written it anyway, of course, so maybe I shouldn't say that he wrote it for me.. but he said he wrote it because I kept telling him too. That counts.

In other writing thoughts, I finished the third volume of 'Year's Beast Fantasy' edited by Lin Carter. It continued in an amusing fashion, being pretty equally split between baroque Lovecraftian tales and sword-and-sorcery stories that used the word 'wench' and too many bangs. And this was only twenty years ago. Did things really change that much? Or am I seeing a representation of Carter's preferences and nothing like an actual survey of what was being written?

Also speaking of writing, I've been reading Mary Kuhner's Jayhawk series in various free moments throughout the day. It's a description of an RPG that she posted to the net several (six? seven?) years ago. It's difficult to describe just why it's so cool, so you really ought to go check it out for yourself. It definitely inspires me to do more roleplaying.

It's almost noon and I've accomplished next to nothing -- I haven't even gotten very far with the .cshrc, since I keep getting distracted by my email and various web pages. I'm going to go patch a machine and then have some lunch.

Do you read this? Why not mail me and let me know?