There is nothing left to do, and little left to say. Three years' worth of work culminates in this, a five-day span in which I will work harder at something than most people would ever dream of calling 'fun.'This database has grown beyond what any of our predictive abilities believed it might become. We expected a flat, two-dimensional set of data: names, addresses, phone numbers. What it became, though, was a central point around which everything else revolved. A repository.

When I awoke from my nap the clock said 10:12; the room, dark. Almost automatically, my awareness drifted down to my legs and found him: there, snuggled close. Not interested in being cuddled or petted, but in nearness, in gathering warmth. I swirled fingertips down his back, and his muscles quivered and rippled in response, his spots and orange splotches shivering with the touch and then settling back down to their normal spaces.

I'm starting to worry a bit about my car. I guess I should be celebrating; I got a call from the body shop this afternoon to let me know that they'd finished up the exterior repair work. They'd also taken the car by the machine shop and had the engine looked at. An explanation—a day after the accident, the 'check engine' light came on.

Suspicious, I asked the body shop to check that out to see if it was part of the problem.

The insurance won't pay for it. The car was rear-ended, and the sensor's up front, so they're not willing to pay for it; even though I'd had it replaced a few months before the accident. Granted, I understand their immediate position—since they can't see a direct correlation, of course they aren't going to pay for it.But it's still frustrating nevertheless, because I have trouble believing that the sensor would've been jarred loose if the accident hadn't happened. Either way, though, it needs to be fixed, and we've got to pay for it.