Today I told the mud world -- well, my corner of it -- what Earl and I decided to do when I move. Which (not to keep you in suspense) is to break up. This is what I said to the mudders:

So Earl & I have been figuring out what to do when I move back to Mountain View. After much painful discussion we've decided that the solution which causes us the least agony (and preserves the most sanity) is to break up when I move. We're neither of us exactly *happy* about this, but it seems like the choice which will gives us the best chance of not being complete wrecks. Our feelings for one another haven't changed, nor are we unhappy with one another (despite being unhappy with the situation), so there's no need to plan social occasions so that we don't interact -- and if anyone tries it they may expect to be scolded soundly. We're going to keep in close contact with each other, and we make no promises not to get back together in the future when we're not living six hours apart. So there.

As soon as I announced this I became intensely sad, which surprised me some. Earl and I decided this a few weeks ago, and both did our share of being tearful, and then things sort of went back to normal. We're not breaking up until I move, so our interactions haven't changed much, aside from a little less tension and a little more fragility. So why this sudden rush of sorrow? Reality, I suppose. Telling everyone else made it hit home. Hard.

I think this says something interesting about how the perceptions of other people shape my own perceptions, especially with regards to my relationships. But frankly, thinking about all of this makes me too upset, so I'll save that discussion for later.

Work is frantic, and I'm getting progressively more stressed as the week goes on. Monday and Tuesday were good days, very productive. Yesterday was somewhat productive -- I forced Microsoft Tech Support to answer a question, and they are actually very helpful -- but further usefulness was ruined by people angsting at me about how I'm leaving and nobody is prepared for it and the company will die without me. Today has been largely a repeat of yesterday, minus the useful tech support people.

Why are my cow-orkers angsting at me? Do they think I'm going to change my mind about leaving? Does it make them feel better to dump a lot of guilt on me? It's not my fault that I'm not being replaced until a week from Monday; I gave almost two months of notice.

Sigh.

It's later. I solved a minor but irritating sendmail problem. I sent a lot of email to the Aimquest people, about a problem someone was having with their service. I fussed with the frontpage server extensions some more.

I did not successfully document any of the things I was going to. That will, I guess, have to wait for tomorrow, as I am yet again too fed up with the world of my workplace to want to stick around writing documentation. Although writing here is helping relieve some of the stress; it's plausible that if I spend long enough fussing with my journal I'll be willing to work more.

What else have I been doing? Oh, boy. Let's see. John Hart, who is dear to me, was around last Thursday and Friday as part of a week-plus visit from Arizona. I did not get to go to the beach with him, which is a shame, nor did we get any time alone for him to interrogate me in. I'm not sure if I mind that or not; being interrogated by John is extremely useful, but rarely comfortable. John exists, as he puts it, "to say the things other people won't." He does it with grace, style, and charm. I wish he'd move back to the Bay Area.

Friday night we (myself, Earl, John, and a friend of John's named Cat) went to Santa Monica, which involved a trip to Midnight Special. I acquired many books:

• Two books of Chinese poetry, one translated by Waley, one translated by a professor at UCSD who ranted about the 'tyranny of English syntax' and how it keeps us English-speakers from truly experiencing poetry. The second of these I acquired because it contains word-by-word translations of the Chinese, which (as one might expect) are reasonably different from the typical translations.
• A novel by Jeanette Winterson, Written On the Body, which is so far beautiful and painful in equal measure. Cat reccomended her to me, and I'm glad for it.
• An odd book with a hot-pink cover, titled My Gender Workbook. This is by Kate Borstein, and from the little I've read of it she seems to argue that gender is entirely unrelated to physical sex (ie: to which bits you happen to have) and thus that sexual orientation is a pretty weird idea, since it confuses gender & sex. Being bisexual and fairly unaware of gender (except inasmuch as I sometimes chose to present myself as more female/male) I tend to agree with all of this, but I haven't gotten far enough into the book yet to decide what I think of her. Jim definitely needs to read this, so I'm saving it for a few weeks.
• Dangerous Angels, which collects all of Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat novels. These are ... odd. They're written at a sort of YA level, but they deal with some real issues, and they have an aspect of fantasy to them that'd make them magic realism if they came from South America. Or so I posit. I read all five of the novels (about 600 pages -- these aren't big books) on Saturday, and enjoyed them muchly. I like the Los Angeles they're set in much better than the one I see.
• Finally, I bought my very own copy of E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, which is (as I understand it from other reading) a collection of critical essays he wrote in the mid-20's about the English novel. I've read pieces of it and been impressed, so owning my own copy will be nice.

Lots of books. Books which I am just going to have to pack and move, this next week. Books I don't have time to read, because I want to finish the Niccolo books before I move, as the copies in my possession belong to the LA library. If they were Earl's I could just steal them; I'm going to steal all of the Patrick O'Brian books I haven't read, which is (fortunately) still the majority of them. (Fortunately because it's always nice to have ten good books waiting for you to read them.)

Sean Ware would like me to remember that the reason I got the Tango job is that his mental powers reached across the continent (from Chicago to Mountain View) and influenced things in my favour. I thought I would tell all of you, as proof that I am giving Sean his proper due for using mind-control on my future employers. This, I suppose, is what I get for asking him to think good thoughts on my behalf.

I am in fact happier & less stressed, due to writing & also due to Liralen. I will go do some more work now.