We've almost run out of March. I'm not sure if the time has been going fast or not; sometimes I feel like it has, and other times I think back on everything I've done -- BAMM, finishing the spec phase at work, finishing my C class at Foothill (and making an A!), reading tons of books, getting ready for Pesach -- so many things that when I look at them all the days seem slow and full. March has been a high-density month, I guess.

And I'm giggling, looking back over that list, at all the things I just skipped over. For instance: I have been doing major work with Norm to figure out good ways to talk about how I process the world and why that makes life difficult for me, and why it's cool, and how this can all be used to help me get on with my process. Plus there's also another side to BAMM, which was actually realising on a deep level that I have things to give. Doesn't that sound silly, written down? But it's one thing to say to yourself 'Self, you are a cool person with things to offer the other people in this world.' and another thing to realise that by doing it. It's for exactly those reasons that I went through with the assistant training last Sunday. Now I'm as trained as I'll ever be and can start assisting basics classes, although hopefully I won't be asked to for a while yet. I'm thinking assisting my first class in June would be good timing; it'd give me two months of free weekends before another five weeks of intensity.

Pesach starts tomorrow night! I am very, very excited. Last night I bought tons of food, and then cleaned my part of the kitchen to a frightening degree. Tonight I'm going to cook a bunch, so I have a lot to eat -- I want to make charoset (apples, walnuts, honey, red wine, ginger) just because I like it, and I also have a onion & mushroom kugel recipe that looks both very good and simple. I've never cooked off of recipes before, so I'm nervous about both the process and the results, but hopefully it'll go well.

Wednesday night is first Seder, and I'm still not sure what I'll be doing for it -- in previous years I've either gone to Harold's (who will be in Fresno tomorrow night but is hosting second Seder on Thursday) or to Jeremy and Rachel's -- but with the impending baby (29 April is the due date) they've got their hands far too full to deal with hosting a seder. So I might try putting one together for myself and Leslie, or I might just wander through the haggadah on my own. I thought about ignoring it entirely, but I just can't do that, so -- we'll see what happens.

What else is happening in my over-full life? Did I ever mention that Jim is now working here? He is. He started fulltime on 15 March, which I guess means he's been here over two weeks now. He seems to be equally happy and stressed, which makes sense; it's the combination of new-job glow and job-changing readjustment. I hope it balances out to something he's really happy with. This company has some flaws, but on the whole I think it's a pretty neat place to work; interesting people, good culture, and a lot of room to grow. I was afraid that working with Jim would be really weird, but as it turns out we hardly see each other -- he's swamped doing sysadmin stuff and I'm swamped doing developer stuff. So far all that's really changed is that it's easier to make plans with him during the day, and we have the same people to gossip about at night. It's nice.

I haven't been playing many computer games lately, and I'm not sure why. Neither Might & Magic VI nor Final Fantasy VII are particularly inspiring right now -- but it's not like there are games which are more inspiring. I'm spending most of my computer time from home reading news. I really need to get an ISP... our frame relay connection is through Jim's now-former company, so it goes away tomorrow and I'll be completely bereft. We're getting another phone line installed this week so I'll have a line I can dial in from, but I'm not sure if I want to upgrade my idiom account for PPP or if I want to find someone else and keep the idiom account telnet-only. Decisions, decisions.

I've been reading a lot, but nothing incredibly worthwhile. Earlier in the month I reread almost all of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books due to the wonders of the Mountain View public library. There are still two novels -- the two newest -- that I couldn't find at the library and thus haven't read yet, plus innumerable short-story collections that I haven't yet been inspired to pick up. At this point I should probably just admit defeat and return them all, but for some reason I keep telling myself I'm going to get to them eventually. Hah.

Now I'm rereading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, of which I own all but the last two books. Bryant bought them for me as a winter-holiday present many (four) years ago, and I'm quite grateful to him. I should probably buy the last two at some point. Anyway, they're pleasant, but I'm not finding them nearly as earth-shaking as I did when I first read them. Maybe I'm just not in a mood to be inspired?

But! As soon as I said that I am reminded of two books I read this month, one of which was very good, and the other of which was at least very interesting. The interesting one is I Never Came to You in White by Judith Farr; it's a novel about Emily Dickinson in early adolescence told entirely through fictional letters. The letters skip around in time in a fascinating way, giving a good picture of how perceptions of events change over time, and how emotions colour one's ideas of people. I'm not quite sure it was a good book, because when you get right down to it it was sort of a modern (feminist?) reimagining of Emily Dickinson... well. I guess it's a very good book if that sort of thing appeals to you, and a very interesting book regardless. Chuck gave it to me for Hannukah -- isn't he a nice coyote?

Then there's the very good book, namely Vernor Vinge's new novel A Deepness in the Sky. This was just as good as everyone says it is, maybe even better. It's a prequel (by eight thousand years or so) to A Fire Upon the Deep, and a lot of reviews say that this book isn't as good -- but to be honest I didn't manage to finish A Fire Upon the Deep and I gobbled this book down in a few nights. To each their own, I guess. I was planning to try AFUtD again as soon as I was done with the new one, but my copy mysteriously went missing, and at this point I'm caught up in my vague rereading of Sandman and am not quite so inspired to jump into a dense novel I remember not enjoying very much. Timing is everything.

And, speaking of timing, I ought to go home from work now. My, this turned out to be a long entry.