Usually, when I'm writing something to be posted here, I have music blaring. Not tonight. Tonight I want to hear the uneven clacking of keys as I hesitantly pound out the thoughts that have stayed with me today. Better, I think, the thoughts get put down—even at this late hour—than to take them to sleep with me.

I am a regular at the new Publix store out in Madison. I think most of the people who work there recognize me now. They greet me with smiles that seem unforced: I would like to think this is because I am cheerful—dare I even say funny?—with them. Several people have noticed that I often come in with Kat, and I think that for a moment or two, some of them presumed that she and I were a couple (judging by the surprise elicited when I mentioned she had a boyfriend and I a husband, neither of whom are ever seen at said grocery store).

Amy: Brad's getting me another video of theirs. At this rate I'll have sold my soul to him by August.
Andy: *laughs*
Amy: He's pleased, surprisingly enough.
Andy: He can't have your soul, I still have lease options.
Amy: bwaaaaah?
Andy: I was going to lease it to a dotcom as a promotional aid.

It always comes down to this.

The thoughts, they always come, in pulses and gasps and stuttering flows of intuition all at the wrong times. The attempts, futile, to pull it together, to make sense of the images and flashes of thought that come at me when I'm more interested in attempting to live my life: the images that stay with me when my eyes close at the end of the day.

How I see the same things in people, over and over, as the years pass. The names change, the people change, yet these are the same eyes and the same mind still looking out and observing, the still point of onlooking that can't seem to look away.

The intellectual part of my mind registers the differences between people, knows their intrinsic differences that make them into different people, but there's still the less cognizant part of me that still comes to a shuddering standstill when confronted with inexplicable strangeness and similarity.

Pictures coming, promise. They're half scanned, and I'll finish them up tomorrow. I'm just not real keen on spending the rest of the time remaining in this day working on these pictures, when they can wait another day without anyone losing sleep over it.

Jeff is trying to wear the cats out again tonight by getting them to chase the laser pointer's beam all over the house. Tenzing, our resident acrobat, has been running himself silly trying to catch the quicksilver-fast point of red light. Silly cat; at least after this, though, he sleeps. Jeff is probably going to throw the cat through the window if Tenzing wakes him up in the middle of the night with his raucous playing.

Please note—my birthday is not coming up anytime soon, so please don't interpret this as a blatant "hey my birthday is next week and you'd better get me stuff "post.

Because, as we all know, I'm horrifically overprepared and wouldn't wait until the week before my birthday!

I've been tinkering around with a wish list at amazon.com for quite some time, but haven't posted a link to it yet.I added a few more things to it this morning and figured what the heck, I'll look crass and commercial and post the damn thing.

Makes me feel icky doing this. Ask my parents—I get squirmy when asked what I want/need for my birthday or Christmas. Because, quite frankly, I take care of my needs, and most of my wants are so incredibly arcane that nobody would ever guess them.

For the next few days my entries will need to be made during the day. For some reason, the light in the computer room is not working, and neither is the fan it is attached to. Thus the room gets light and dark according to the passage of day. Add to the mix my none-too-strong eyes, and problems result. At this point in time, the easiest resolution is not to use the computer room when it is dark outside.

Until the lights are fixed, so much for the luxury of late-night journal writing; the thoughts must be bared in the light of day.

It is storming outside again, patchy, intermittent storms. Mother Nature can't seem to make up her mind whether she wants to rain or not, but she is being indecisive enough that I will not be able to work in the flowerbeds today like I'd wanted to.

Yesterday's purchases from a local nursery: two tiny pots each of French tarragon, standard chives, and Kentucky Colonel spearmint.