mariness

So H arrived Friday afternoon. We ran a couple of errands and then settled in for a bit of anime viewing, with a show I'd never seen before, Omishi Musical Theater, Risky/Safety. I have thoughts, but most will have to wait: my main thought at the time is that watching this on DVD tends to have a very repetitive feel, as each episode is only about ten minutes, three of which involve repeating the credits, repeating what happened in the previous episode, and telling us what will happen in this episode, twice, which when you watch too many episodes in a row becomes annoying. At around 7, H, my brother and I took a look at the decidedly ominous clouds and made an executive decision to go find food, now, even though coldecho had not arrived. As it turned out, rain and coldecho arrived at the same time in the parking lot.

The restaurant was somewhat louder than expected, since...mariachi band! We were going to ask them to play either Nine Inch Nails or Rawhide (neither, I'd like to note, my suggestion) but this did not exactly happen. What did happen was the mariachi band following "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...." with Bad Romance, which was amusing enough.

Anyway, that was the arrival of coldecho, who with H stole me away to Gainesville and limited internet activity, returned me all sick and dizzy to bed sometime Sunday and today and this week is planning meandering fun things, presumably without the Little One, to his grave disappointment. I should be popping on here for a couple of important updates on other things tomorrow, and the usual Tor post should be up Thursday, but otherwise, I'll probably be mostly offline until next Monday.

1. Marginally alive after a good if exhausting weekend up in Gainesville with the twice-yearly gathering of varied friends and some fish. (The fish, I must say, were not overly sociable.) Astoundingly, during this weekend, I managed to:

-- drive by a place called the Caffeine Bar at Ben and Jerry's not once, not twice, but four times and not once go in. (I also failed to follow through with my plan to indulge in a chocolate milkshake from nearby Steak and Shake. I am not sure Who I Am anymore.)

-- spend a few quality hours with very lonely cookies and not release them from their misery.

-- make up for this by later quite happily releasing some lemon things that assured me, quite personally, that they would just die if they were left out on the table and it was mean to leave them there.

-- hang out with people and yet feel as if I barely saw anybody all weekend. (Admittedly, in one case this was because I really did barely see said person, who had to be towed up from south of Ocala and quite selfishly spent the next day attempting to fix his car instead of hanging out. The nerve of some people.) It was weird.

-- visit or drive through the UF campus at least three times. (For someone who has never been to UF, I do seem to spend a surprising amount of time on its campus.)

-- try out Farah's, if not the hookah bar part; excellent Middle-Eastern food.

-- find out about all kinds of things that should not be done while flying over the Gulf of Mexico.

Alas, I missed much of the main party, since I stayed out by the pool avoiding the noise and also keeping a very careful eye on the root beer. (Rumors that I was guarding it only to steal it later are Not At All True. After all, it was almost all safe later, right? Right? What do you mean, wrong?)

2. Apparently, the Little One responded to my absence by hiding all weekend – until, that is, I returned home, when he began HOWLING, and I mean HOWLING, from the window. I initially assumed the apartment had been invaded by aliens, and then realized that the aliens would have been considerably quieter. (The Grey One responded to my absence by napping on the couch, and then, after further thought, napping on the chair. So am I loved.) The howling did not cease until I managed to open the door, at which point, I faced the full strength of a 15 pound cat turning himself into a little cannonball and launching himself directly for my knees. It will surprise no one that neither my knees nor I completely survived this. He has been tangled up on either a leg or arm nearly every minute since, apparently in the hopes that I will not notice this and will carry him away quite by accident if I ever leave again.

3. Since the news is out on the web (on SFSignal, no less), yes, yes, tgregoryt and I are househunting, which here can be a Serious Adventure, even leaving aside the inappropriate elephants. And yes, we did find some inappropriate elephants. Just one of those things.

4. Speaking of SFSignal, they've been asking various people for a list of ten books that should be in every SF fan's library. Part one is here; part two, which includes my contribution, is here. More about that in my next post.

Heading up to the wilds of Gainesville in a bit, and not anticipating checking email or other things much until Monday.

In my absence, go wild :) Well, you can do that in my presence, too.