1 cup of coffee.
4 slices of dense, chewy walnut and olive bread spread with herbed goat cheese.
1 small Dungeness crab.
1 small salad with lettuce, broccoli and carrots, bleu cheese dressing.
1 orange.

*heaven*

This sounds like a great 2010! Thanks, garunya!

That was intense. Stanford barely won tonight. St. Mary's was solid as a rock in defense and never seemed to fall apart mentally. Stanford, on the other hand, lost its marbles a few times. But they won, so they advance to the Sweet Sixteen next weekend, playing Michigan. If they win that, and they should, they will play the winner of Illinois versus Hawaii. It's going to be really exciting.

After that, volleyball is over for the season as far as me getting to any games. I may have withdrawal.

Or I may check out the gymnastics meets in January. I love gymnastics. It's the only team sport I was part of in school. It's probably hard to believe now, but I was kind of a shrimp until high school when I grew five inches and developed a saucy figure. The shrimpiness meant my dreams of being a ballerina were always doomed, though I did not realize it until fifth grade. My build meant I was never destined to be any kind of professional athlete, but truthfully, I never had the passion for it. I could have been a ski bum pretty happily. However, my parents insisted I go to college instead.

I do love watching young people play sports, though. I hope Stanford wins the NCAA championship. And you, lucky people, do not have to read me babbling about volleyball for another nine months now.

No photos, it's not that interesting. I was going to hold out until next year, but what's one month? I did go seven months without letting anyone touch my hair. Boy, did it look like it, so I stopped by the beauty supply place and had Richard even things up for me. Now it's a bob instead of a mullet, though I wouldn't let him cut the top at all. He did okay, but I doubt I'll go back to him.

Anyway, my hair no longer reminds me of the bad haircut I had in May and it looks styled. That's all I want for another seven months.

Meanwhile, I'm working my way through a couple of recent novels and not feeling tremendous love for them. Let me clarify: I'm very critical of the writing. I don't like stories where everyone senses their future or has a (correct, as it turns out) feeling about some situation they cannot possibly know enough about to get to that feeling. It's sort of foreshadowing, but it comes across as unnecessary. I don't need my characters to have a moment of clairvoyance about their own narrative, really, unless it pulls together a bunch of threads that I thought were disparate. Or, of course, if they're meant to be psychic. That would be okay, though maybe annoying in a different way.

So I'm also rereading all the Vlad Taltos books, because I love the Dragaeran novels and they never let me down or do stupid things. A lot of times they do wonderful things, some of which I'm just now appreciating.

Happy birthday to papersky! I hope it is splendid.

It's unseemly to parade my grief or losses more than I already have. But today is World AIDS Day and I have lost friends to AIDS. So I will say only this: sometimes, when I remember the 80's and become mistily nostalgic for them, I also remember how quickly everyone had to learn about HIV and AIDS, how fearful we became as a nation, how fearful or fearless, terrified or courageous, irresponsible or compassionate (sometimes all those things in turn) we became as individuals. It changed everything.

Somewhere it still is, right now, every minute.

Gracious, I haven't done that in ages. I came home from my three-day pet sitting frenzy ready to enjoy a quiet evening. It was very quiet indeed: I went to bed at eight o'clock and slept for eleven hours.

Now I'm having coffee and trying to recover from all the dreaming. It was kind of intense, but very interesting and revealing. I've sorted out some big issues, I guess. Although there was a long segment involving Lindsey Lohan and I have no idea what that was about other than I need to stop reading celebrity magazines.

It was a good three days, I'm happy to have made some money and I never want to try to find parking in San Francisco again, specifically in the Mission and the Castro. On the other hand, in three days I only had to pay for parking twice and I didn't get a ticket. I am smug about that. I am less smug about choosing to drive around one particular block on Black Friday; oh, what a fool I am! It took me twenty-five minutes to get from Mission to Fifth to Market to Fourth heading south. Shoals of shoppers crowded the crosswalks so that only two cars could get through on a light.

Anyway, today I'm not getting out of my pyjamas and I'm not leaving the house. Unless I need to go grocery shopping, but we have leftover soup, spaghetti and pizza so I say we eat that. The cats have fresh food and a fresh litter box. I had a shower and a foot rub after eating dinner last night, which was all I really needed to make my life perfect. I'm not moving except to get more coffee.

ETA: I am shocked to learn of Rob Holdstock's death this morning. I've been worried about his length of stay in hospital, but I didn't imagine he wouldn't recover. It's like a horrible dream.

I still remember him saying, "Come on, let's go visit Clive Barker, he's a friend, he won't mind!" when some of us had been over at Malcolm and Chris Edwards' place having dinner and quite a few drinks. Clive didn't invite us in, but he did stand talking to us for a bit. Funny, I haven't thought of that evening in decades.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. and the tradition is to spend it with loved ones, or with family at any rate. Traditionally this involves a huge dinner featuring roast turkey and a dozen side dishes, football or the Macy's parade on the television, visiting with friends and relatives, and for a lot of people the bliss of a four day weekend.

I will spend around twelve hours tomorrow driving from one home to another to take care of people's cats. I will be cleaning something like twenty litter boxes, providing fresh food and water, cleaning food bowls and taking out the garbage. I will also, and this is what makes it fun, be spending time with something like twenty cats. Some of them will hide from me for the entire visit. Some will ignore any attempt to be amused and just sit somewhere where they can see me. Some will greet me at the door, be friendly while I feed them, then pretend I don't exist. Some will purr and wind around my feet and act like I'm their new best friend. Some will sit in my lap, bring me a toy, beg to go outside, groom my hands assiduously, pat my face if I stop petting them for a minute, leap like a wild, demented monkey from perch to perch or go tearing through the house like their tail was on fire.

I will thoroughly enjoy myself. I will get unbelievably filthy. I will not have a proper lunch.

When I finally get home John will make us spaghetti for dinner because it's easy and he knows how to make it. I will probably be in bed by ten. And then I'll do the same thing again on Friday and Saturday. There will be no turkey or stuffing, no yams or mashed potatoes, no green beans or cranberry jelly this Thanksgiving. I'm working too hard to face putting together even a late dinner on Sunday when my work load drops to almost nothing. Last year I insisted on finding the time, but it just about wore me out.

I'm a little sad. I have made Thanksgiving dinner for the two of us every year for decades, delighting in creating our own family tradition and almost never going to someone else's house for the meal (I secretly resent not having the food I consider non-negotiable for Thanksgiving, you see). I have no Christmas traditions, oddly enough, because aside from always having a tree and always opening our presents Christmas morning after Santa Claus had made his visit, there was nothing we did the same every year. We went to church if it was a Sunday, but Christian Scientists don't have special services for Christmas so mostly we just hung around the house playing with our new presents. Thanksgiving, however, was drenched in tradition. Also, I really love roast turkey, the dressing recipe I got from Denise Rehse years ago, the gravy made from giblets and pan drippings and all the side dishes. It's my favorite meal of the year.

However, my busiest time of the year is during the holidays and Thanksgiving is always going to be crazy. I'm grateful people are traveling again, despite the economy, and I'm grateful the meters will be off so I can park for free all day, and I'm especially grateful to be doing my second Thanksgiving as a pet sitter. I can hardly believe it's been a year since I was sitting by myself in a virtually empty office where everyone else had been laid off, marveling that I was paying off the entirety of my consumer debt on December 1st and deciding I would just do it, I would give notice, say goodbye forever to the corporate world and make a go of pet sitting.

It's worth missing a meal for. Maybe I'll make Thanksgiving dinner on December 15th to celebrate the anniversary of my last day as a corporate cog. I am so glad to be here now.

la_marquise_de_ wishes to know:

1) Where were you born?
San Francisco, California, USA.

2) When did you take up photography and why?
I was given my first camera at age 10 and loved it immediately. I became serious about improving my photography around 1998 and people started telling me I was good around 2003. I rarely photograph people, preferring animals, landscapes, flowers and architecture. I am teaching myself classic lighting techniques this winter.

3) How many different places have you lived?
Five: California, Washington, New York, Virginia and Tennessee.

4) How did you meet Pam W?
I met her my first night in London (April, 1984) at the Pickersgills. We were all traveling up to Newcastle for the first Mexicon the next day. I brought her a pink plastic cowgirl jacket and our friendship was sealed for life.

5) I first heard of you as a fanzine person -- tell me about your ish!
My first ish was published in 1983. My last ish was published in 1997. I think I published ten or twelve different titles, often in collaboration with someone. Most people remember _Rude Bitch_, a fanzine I did with Avedon Carol. The last zine was called _Southern Gothic_ and it was pretty good.

I believe you are supposed to tell me resistance is futile in the comments if you want me to ask you five questions. But you could also just say I should ask you five questions about yourself, and then you post them in your journal and continue the meme virus.