It is three a.m. The glass in my hand is empty. I am neither drunk nor awake, sober nor exhausted; merely a place in between that defies explanation. It is three a.m., and the glass in my hand—filled only once—is now empty. I slept somewhere between one and two hours the previous night, and followed it up today by somewhere around sixteen straight hours of work at the convention.I am exhausted; the brutal floating exhaustion that leadens feet, shortens calf muscles, and makes my lower back ache.

Backstage: it's not what you'd expect. It's more, it's less, it's completely different from what you've imagined. The world behind the curtain is very, very different from the world that the fans see.

It wasn't that he looked so different. Or, perhaps, so it was—in the beginning.

But beginning impressions—like all kicks to the gut—fade, even though the remembrance remains.

Edmund has apparently decided that, despite our trimming his claws an hour ago, we're still worthy of being shown his cute and cuddly side. As I type, he is lying in his accustomed perch to my right, curled up in a position that is neither on his side nor on his back, but a combination of the two. He has a paw draped over his nose in an attempt to block out the light from the ceiling fixture.

Not all the changes that take place here show up on the front page, but some are worth noting here when they happen.

Someone asked me recently if I, the consummate list-maker, had a list of movies I was slowly working through in order to learn more about modern cinema. In a nutshell: yes, but only since last week, when you first mentioned it to me.

These are movies released within the last ten years—and yes, it's going to take me a long time to see all of these. But, nevertheless, here they are.

I am part of the chain.

Jeff, on the answering machine this morning: "Amy, turn on the television now."
Ten minutes later, to Kat: "Kat, turn on your television now. What channel? Any channel."
To Brad: "What are they saying up there? Please, tell me something I don't know already."
To Andrew: "Hold on, hold on….my God. It's gone."
To Heather: "Is Andy okay? Have you heard?"

Yesterday, after an hour's worth of staring at the TV in shock and horror, my instinct for historical preservation kicked in. In the past, we have been able to glean a lot of information from newspapers. But this tragedy was different—the news was updated incrementally as the day went on. Unlike news of yesteryear, when the majority of news was written for a single daily deadline and published, yesterday's news was continually rewritten as the events continued to unfold.

After another night of delayed sleep, I made a thoroughly wavering, uncertain decision today to limit how much information I took in about the destruction in New York.

We bandy about the phrase "too much information," but in this case, it can be all too true. For each person it's different—but we each know when it happens—the moment when we know too much, and it's more than we can handle, emotionally or intellectually.I reached my moment about twenty-four hours ago over a specific, painful piece of information. For me, it was learning about a particular incident that the networks all have on videotape but refuse (rightly) to show. Even knowing of its existence was more than I could take. Jeff knows what that particular image was, but I will not repeat it here, for repetition is salt for the wound, not solace.

The answers are: nowhere interesting, nothing much, thanks. How about you?

I've spent a couple of days buried pretty deeply into the greymatter hacks/mods portion of this site. Seems like every time I do that, I come out two days later with no desire to touch any kind of HTML for a while. If nothing else, it's subsumed the urge to create new designs for at least a few days.Since Tuesday, I haven't touched any kind of design. I think that's the strongest evidence of how much the events in New York have shaken me—they've stopped my creative process for the time being.

Have you ever asked yourself why you do something?

I did something today that I've been putting off for quite some time: I restarted my novel. I've known for quite some time that something wasn't right, and that I was going to have to scrap what I'd done so far, but I didn't know why. About a month ago, it came to me. My error was not in the characterization or my choice of plot, but in how the story was being told.It was to my horror when I realized that I was stuck because I'd chosen the wrong point of view. It's intended to be a character study of one woman, and in my plunging into the writing, I thought it best that I write from her point of view.

Why do people hate used books so much?

I've asked myself this question a lot over the past few years, and the only answer I've come up with is that some people feel strange buying a book that's already been read by someone else. Is there such a thing as literary virginity? Most people seem to think so.Think about it:

"I don't want to read it because someone's already read it."
"I don't want to sleep with him/her because someone already has."

Jeff and I take some halfhearted malicious fun from watching the Miss America pageant every year. We never mean to watch it, and we never realize when it's about to air. But each year, somehow, we manage to channel-surf right before the pageant begins airing and one of us says, "Oh, hell, we'll get a laugh or two out of this, grab dinner and bring it in here!"

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The Fourth Amendment is not so often quoted as the fighting words of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

but it is, in its own way, as strong as the First.

Kat picked me up after her last class today, and we drove to the video store. Over the past month I've mostly exhausted the halfway-interesting selection at Movie Gallery, and now must move on to the higher-priced Hollywood Video.

I mentioned how many movies Jeff and I usually watch during a week. She was boggled until I reminded her that we do not watch much television. It's not that we're regimented; it's that not much interests both of us. Mondays were once busy viewing nights. Adding Robert Downey Jr. to Ally McBeal turned me into a mostly-loyal viewer for about a season. Then they axed him, and I decided it was more interesting to write or read during that time. I'd move from that show to Daria, on MTV, but MTV periodically removes the show from its lineup, and 'now' apparently falls under the category of 'periodically.' Perhaps it will return—it has before.

A small dash of serendipity struck this afternoon. Kat and I are going to make arrangements to go to Birmingham sometime soon—probably next weekend. She needs a particular facial cleanser from a store whose closest outlet is in Birmingham, and we both want to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch. We'll combine trips.

Like today; we combined forces at Costco. Costco, like Sam's, sells everything in bulk. (Need a metric ton of crackers? They've got them.) Since we both live in small households, this isn't always useful for us. We all know that meat is significantly cheaper there, but the packages are so large that they're not terribly useful for us. It occurred to me a few months ago that if two of us were willing to combine forces, that we could split some purchases and come out with a lot of meat for the less-than-horrific amounts that we're accustomed to paying.

In lieu of a new journal entry, I proffer the latest cat.net skin, "gothgirl." Like all the others, it's available at the skins page. With it, I'm inaugurating a new script that I plan to make available in a few more of the cat.net skins soon: random entries.

As promised, I've made available another new skin, "glacial." This skin is intended to serve as a companion to 'pazdziernika' (autumn) and as an equal and opposite to 'gothgirl.' It's light—snow and ice—as opposed to the intense earthy colors of autumn.