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.

I'm up way too early this morning—I have to go to Birmingham with Cathy today. It's not the "with Cathy" part that I mind—I like her a lot—but the "Birmingham" part. Yukyuk. I've got to train a client today, and to be honest, this is the least favorite part of my job. I'd be happy to be a computer jockey, and keep my client interaction to a minimum.

Tenzing woke me up at 4:30 this morning. Evidently, it was time to be cuddly. It took me a while to go back to sleep, and I was thinking about some of the friends I've gotten to visit. The Typical Geek Complaint, of course, came unbidden into my head:"Oh, if only all of my friends lived in the same place!"

mmmm. Last night was fun—spent most of it over at the wondergeeks' consoling a group of geeks who had had a Very Bad Day[tm]. I'm saddened to report that Kat's day was made worse today by the death of her grandfather down in New Orleans.

Kiddo, I know you read this. It hurts me to see you go through this. I went through the same thing in '96, down to very nearly the exact same circumstances, and it took a long time to heal. The first six months were hellish; the loss of my grandfather was an empty void in my soul that I felt from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning (on really bad days, even before then) and didn't go away until I went to sleep that night. The next six months weren't as bad; by that time I was learning how to live with grief.

Kat's here—she and Jeff are trying to work through some sticky differential equations. Ahhh, the fun that occurs when undergrad EEs meet up with my graduate-student EE husband! You'll note that I'm hanging out here in the computer room with Edmund and avoiding all the joyous calculus. :)

I'm trying to figure out where the weekend went. I slept longer than usual Saturday while recovering from that small bout of the yuks, and I think that's where part of the weekend vanished to. Today's been quiet—I bought groceries, cleaned up the kitchen a bit, and rested. Really rested. Brain rest is good, because tomorrow morning I need to wake up, go to work, and crank out a mind-boggling second-level navigation proposal for my company's website. Yeah, I can do this on a Monday morning.

I'm contemplating an ice cream bar. I've been craving sweets all day—rather unusual of me, since I usually don't crave sweet things.