Well, I didn't write all weekend for all my usual reasons, and then I didn't write the last two days due to busy-ness, although I did spend part of yesterday neatening last week's entries & getting them up. I'm also continuing to translate old entries into the new code, which is a slow and rather painful process -- painful mostly because it's hard to read what I wrote nine months ago. Why am I always so painfully self-assured that I have Everything Figured Out? You'd think after tripping over myself this many times I'd learn some humility or something.

(Although I suppose even that statement is full of its own pretensions and silliness that I'll be cringing over in another six-nine months.)

What have I been so busy with? Work somewhat, as I have a stack of resumes, whose owners I must phone-screen to see if it's worth interviewing them to take my job. Plus I'm attempting to determine if adding the FrontPage 98 server extensions to our sites is a good idea or not; my gut reaction says not (it's Microsloth!), but I am attempting to put it fairly through its paces before deciding.

Otherwise I have few excuses, except for the headache-and-fever combination which has been plaguing me on and off for the last week -- oh, and the emergency staff meeting yesterday afternoon which lasted far too long. And learning Java. Learning Java would have gone much quicker early on if anyone had explained to me that it's just like D&D. Fortunately for me, Earl pointed this out Monday night. Now my only problem is that I seem to want to write a D&D character generator in Java.

No, I haven't played D&D in years. Blame it all on Brad for starting a nostalgic rules-driven munchkin-encouraging D&D game simply for the sake of allowing everyone to relive their youth in more pleasant circumstances.

Recently I've been devouring a book of Virginia Woolf's letters with the greatest enjoyment. I actually own the first few volumes of her collected letters, as well as the first volume or two of her diaries, but this particular book I picked up at the USC library several months ago. Congenial Spirits is the title, and it is well-edited; letters grouped in two to three year periods, with each grouping headed by some biographical information, and the letters minimally footnoted for clarity. The result -- well, I'm two hundred pages into it and show no signs of stopping. The big six-volume collections are nice for completeness, but there's only so many polite letters to relatives complaining about the servants I can read before losing interest. Congenial Spirits is just a selection of the best letters, the ones filled with discussions of art & writing, cheerful gossip, and some truly whimsical flights of fancy which were apparently typical of her conversation as well as her letter-writing.

I've still not read any of Virginia Woolf's fiction. Earl went to Borders last night, while I was on the phone with Jim, and picked up Night and Day and Jacob's Room for me. I read the first two chapters of Night and Day and was not quite bored. I'm not sure if it's just not a very good book (Virginia (I'm sorry, I've read too many letters now to call her Mrs. Woolf, and it's just too clunky using the full name all the time) didn't think it was -- it was her second novel, written before she became experimental, and she seems to have liked it the least of all her books), or if the sort of novels Woolf writes are just not the sort of thing I'll ever enjoy. I should probably keep on with it, and if it gets to be too much try Jacob's Room instead, which was her first really experimental book.

Earl also picked me up a copy of The Garden Party and other stories by Katharine Mansfield, who was Virginia's contemporary but died of TB in 1923, having written a few dozen short stories at most. I haven't really looked at it yet, but I'm curious -- Virginia seems to have felt Katharine was serious competition, which I suppose means that Katharine's stories are the sort of thing Virginia wanted to do. At the point that Katharine started being published Virginia had written her first two novels (The Voyage Out and Night and Day), and hadn't yet done anything experimental. Not that I'm sure I'll even understand why Jacob's Room is experimental, seventy-five years on, but I should try it and find out.

Have I bored you all to tears yet? Being interested in the private lives of these people makes me feel like I ought to find the work they dedicated their lives to interesting as well. I think I'll be disappointed if I don't, although I'm not sure if it'll be disappointment with myself, with the work, or with the authors themselves.

I went on at Jim last night about wanting to write, and not having read much non-genre fiction, and having no idea how to study technique, and a bunch of other things as well. That's helping to drive this sudden first attempt to read Virginia's writing -- although, really, I suppose it all goes back to her letters after all. She writes to her friends & family constantly about the books she's reading & how they're helping her learn about technique, as well as about the books by contemporary authors she's reviewing, and how awful or wonderful they are. All of this makes me want to do nothing but read, and write, and talk about reading & writing, and learn how to construct a decent review -- and instead I'm at work. It's enough to make one renounce a career and go back to school, except I don't think I could stand being poverty-stricken. Much better to sandwich all of this into my current life.

I do need more people to talk books with, though. Where does one find them?