Updates
It seems like I keep forgetting to mention various things that I've been up to. For example, I completely failed to talk about going to see Noises Off in San Francisco a few weeks back with Naomi B. and her husband (whom I had, up until that point, been pretty sure was imaginary) and sarcastic_halli; was fun, a good production. Not quite as brilliant as (my memory of) the version produced at Swarthmore, but given that that Swarthmore production is in my top three live theatre productions I've ever seen, that's not surprising.
Anyway, some other (more recent) stuff:
- Left the house with a nice feeling of general well-being this morning, despite not having had enough sleep, mainly because of warm sunshine. I'm still amazed after all these years at how strong an effect sunshine has on me.
- I tried to attend a lunch with my co-workers today, but nobody was at the restaurant when I got there. I waited half an hour (I didn't have the cell phone number of anyone I was expecting to see there), then ran an errand and went back to the office. I think what happened was the lunch was scheduled for "12:00 -0800" before the Daylight Savings switchover, and so the time probably changed to "13:00 -0700" in the Outlook calendar. Only I don't use Outlook, so I was just going by the text of the original email message, which of course remained unchanged. But I did get to stand in the sun reading sf for half an hour, and afterward I got a nice sense of accomplishment by dropping off some necessary papers with the accountant who's doing my taxes, so it was all fine. (Speaking of taxes, this evening I read that a bunch of states are now asking people to list their out-of-state tax-free purchases on their tax returns, for sales tax purposes. I pretty much approve of sales tax, so I figured I ought to do that, so I went through my old email receipts looking for purchases made online in 2003. And though I did find an awful lot of those, I also found two or three significant tax-deductible donations that I'd made to various organizations that I hadn't listed on the form I gave the accountant, so I'll call him tomorrow and increase my deduction, and add the sales taxes. Should roughly balance out.)
- Nominee for the "Most Likely to Make Me Feel Like I'm Doing Something Wrong Even Though I'm Not" award: carrying 25 flattened cardboard boxes out to my car, down the back stairs at work, at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday evening, and seeing the security truck drive past and then stop not far away as if watching me. I had a perfectly good explanation: they were my boxes, I'd brought them to work a couple weeks ago for a co-worker to use (and bringing 80 flattened cardboard boxes into the office late one evening was also embarrassing to have to explain to the security guard; luckily, that guard has seen me around a lot and we've said friendly hellos, so he was willing to accept my explanation), and he hadn't used all of them, and now someone else needed the leftovers. So it all made sense, but I still didn't relish the thought of trying to explain it to anyone.
- Recently finished reading "Arabian Wine" by Gregory Feeley in the April/May issue of Asimov's. A remarkable novella (about 30K words); there's a lot of details that I didn't follow in it, due to lack of familiarity with the Venetian empire, but I really like the intermingling of coffee and steam power, and the use of coffee as metaphor, and the rich sense of history and place; and I think it's the kind of story where a second reading will bring out even more of it (though on a larger screen; this is a story that did not benefit from being read on a Palm). I also like that it's about economics; I was talking with Arthur E. about it, and he told me about some of the economic upheavals that went on in Europe around that time, including an economic collapse due mostly to a bank overextending itself. In high school European history, nobody ever talked about economics. It reminded me of Ben R's discussions of double-entry bookkeeping and the rise of the corporation and singularities. And "Arabian Wine" reminds me, in its emphasis on economics, in an odd sort of way of Charlie Stross's work, the understanding that systems of exchange are deeply ingrained into human societies. I suspect this isn't making much sense; suffice it to say, I found the Feeley novella interesting even in the places where I wasn't entirely sure what was going on. (One more thing I liked about it: the rich sense of there being multiple conflicting factions. So much sf (and other popular fiction) is predicated on the notion that there are good guys and there are bad guys, a Manichean polarity that makes for enjoyable fiction but not for complex exploration of difficult issues.)
I'm pretty sure there was more, but it's late and I'm sleepy, so that'll do for now.
