It is so quiet here in the house. It's just after eleven. Jeff still isn't home. He called the apartment while I was over there, watching the second installment of Dune with Heather, Jess, and Kat. Something about a paper—or a test—or something. I don't know; he spoke to Heather and not to me.

I feel better than yesterday, but that's not saying much. The muscles in my stomach ache, and I'm still finding the idea of food more appealing than its actual counterpart.

Repeat after me: I will not whine. I will not whine. I will not whine. I will not whine.

Since the wondergeeks invited me over to watch Dune and try to eat some soup, I thought I'd take them up on the offer. The movie was excellent—this miniseries looks like it will be miles better than the previous attempt to bring Frank Herbert's novel to the screen—but I think it would've been better for me if I could've managed to keep down some of the soup they fed me.

One of the problems in life is that I'm fat enough that I don't fit into fairy godmother costumes without a lot of uncomfortable poking, squeezing, and pinching. But every now and then it seems like clambering into one of those costumes is the right and necessary thing to do.

It's been a wild weekend. Looking back, we managed to do almost none of the things that I'd promised Andy that we'd do this weekend. Because we got stranded outside of Birmingham on Friday night, we didn't get to go to the art exhibits. Because of a particularly nasty car fire (someone else's car, not ours) on Saturday night, we opted not to go to the Christmas event on the mountain. But I think the actual events of the weekend made up for the planned events that didn't happen.To say that Andy and Heather hit it off well this weekend would be a bit of an understatement—especially considering that he didn't even come back to our house to sleep on Saturday night.

It's such a pleasure to have friends here. I do still sometimes wish that all of my friends lived in one place. It would mean that the times between talks such as these would not be so long and so quiet. Instead I find myself the occasional Gertrude Stein of the geek community, bringing them together and letting contacts go as they may.

To quote Stein, we geeks are ourselves something of a lost generation. We are geographically isolated from each other, yet depend on our electronic boxes for our socialization, our information, our friendships, our world. We are minorities in every community, and the majority in a few shockingly-priced communities that are out of the reach of those of us bright enough to master our trades but not to be the shockingly brilliant wunderkind that brings out the mega-funding from corporate America.

ah, tired. The good tired that comes with visitors and much talking and staying up past your bedtime to catch up on stories that are much more reluctantly told over the impersonalizing medium of the 'net.

Andy toddled off to bed just after midnight; good and tired, I would think. He's had more of an interesting day than any of us bargained on. Accidents are, by their nature, unscheduled. As I was driving Kat's car back from the airport, the transmission gave out.

This, of course, is a bad thing to have happen when you're barreling down a highway at 75mph. To look down as the car starts shuddering just in time to see the tachometer spike to nearly 60,000rpm and feel the accelerator fall to the floor is a frightening experience, especially if you've been rear-ended less than three months before.

Tonight's Bubonic Mouse™ award goes to Colortyme—and, by proxy, every other rent-to-own shop in northeast Alabama with nasty guilt-tripping ads.

The first thing I heard in my car this morning was a spiel about how you should placate your family this holiday season. For your wife, buy her a bedroom suite to keep her quiet. For your children, a Playstation 2 to stop their whining.

Then it finished with the following jingle:"It's not what you thought.
It's what you bought."