Decant Circles

After some wrestling with the dough, the gingerbread cookies got cut out and baked. I am uncertain and find them a little pasty, but John says they're not bad. And the kitchen smells like gingerbread, which is always nice. Will make more batches with the rest of the dough later; right now I'm feeling kind of wiped.

My Dunwich Whippoorwills T-shirt arrived. As did the Clocket I ordered for commodorified, which is absolutely lovely. Have hit the point where I have a hundred little 5ml bottles of perfume[1], and am culling a bit while reading and watching movies.

...yes, it actually is that quiet.
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[1] It's the decant circles.

John and I got a popup book of "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" for his nephew. Our nephew.

Since it's been suggested that perhaps I should avoid reciting the Gashlycrumb Tinies to the kid now that he's old enough to understand them, this is perhaps an acceptable alternative. :)

(Also picked up a four-pack of small skull-shaped erasers, for personal use.)

Read an interview with Gary A. Braunbeck in Apex. Am beginning to understand appreciate get an inkling of where some of the impact from In Silent Graves may have come from. When your daughter is born and lives six days and you don't ever get to see her because you and your wife are having problems and the only chance you get to say goodbye is from an intern sneaking you into the morgue and she's going to be cremated so they didn't patch her up after the autopsy and you only ever hold her for a hundred and twenty seconds and you try to cope a little by putting some of the recollection into your work--

--yeah. Okay. It has impact.

Finished Mr. Hands and "Kiss of the Mudman". I'll be picking up the rest of his stuff, I think.

Today went by very fast.

Assembled last-minute stocking stuffers[1], ironed out an upsetting but solveable scheduling issue, checked to see if there was any word on my Weird Tales coming in, grabbed dinner out with John and Kevin...

...damn. That really doesn't sound like much. I have no idea how it took up my day.

Pleasantly tired, vaguely headachey, and wondering exactly how quiet it's going to be at work on Monday.
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[1] Wrote "stocking suffers". Am now vaguely wondering if I should go watch Nightmare Before Christmas or something.

...and in other news, sitting in a comfy chair, browsing Threads, and drinking peppermint tea[1] before going back to a largely-empty office where you are playing Abney Park's The Death of Tragedy is a very good use of a lunchtime. I'm practically feeling human again.
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[1] Also fending off the verbal approaches of someone who apparently just wants to start a conversation. Odd, but she got the hint after two sallies. I was really not up to dealing with anyone today.

Lost my USB key.

I'm pretty sure I know where it is--the property manager had a sign in the front hallway saying "Hey, I found a memory stick in the basement, come by the office". And I know what's on it, which should rather help in identifying it. And nothing on it is anything that I'm worried about anyone else having. And if the property manager *doesn't* have it, the most annoying thing would be losing the most up-to-date version of the BPAL spreadsheet.

But damn damn damn, now I *know* I've lost it, and I can't get it back until Monday at the earliest.

*twitch*

I am a reasonable soul.

So I am not, all flights of fancy to the contrary, going to *kill* those coffee shop clerks.

Yes, *those* ones.

The ones who, when I finally made it in this morning and asked for a coffee to quash the squidgy pain throbbing behind my left eye, smiled and nodded and relayed the order and took my money and gave me decaf.

*Them.*

*stabs vaguely in the direction of the offending coffee shop with a fork and goes back to huddling over the cup of instant. Oh, this is going to screw with my hoped-for sleep schedule but good...*

*Was* feeling better.

After not getting to sleep until at least 2:00, woke up at 5:30 with screamingly sore throat. Drank heated Gatorade and took painkillers. Fell asleep until 9:00, when I needed to be woken up twice. Stuffed head, tender scrapey non-functional throat, intermittent coughing up of muck, breaking a sweat at the insupportable exertion of walking three blocks...

Went to work. No, I don't know either. Mostly kept thinking that *I* was thinking it was worse than it was, due to the lack of sleep and me hating being sick. (Note: I might be describing it as worse than it was. Yay, unreliable narrator.)

Got doctor's appointment. Was prescribed two different types of inhaler, since am apparently one of those people who occasionally gets asthma-like symptoms from a cold. For the rest of it: painkillers and hydration.

Finished day at work. I'd left a document partway through formatting when I headed out for the appointment, you see. It was just sitting there. Waiting. I *had* to go back.

Went home. Lay down on couch. Pizza and entertainment magically appeared in my vicinity. (I married a magician.) Garlic is great when you're sick. You can actually *taste* it, and eating becomes interesting again.

I'm sure I did something useful today outside of work... Sewing advice! Right. I found useful sewing advice to give to a newbie. And... I... *cudgels brain* ...read stuff. Discovered at 1:00 a.m. this morning that I don't actually have much to read when tired, drinking chamomile tea, and trying to fall asleep.[1] Eventually resorted to 1000 Wild Little Weird Tales, which worked relatively well.
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[1] I have learned to *not* use the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies for this purpose. Also, no Tiptree. In fact, I think I have a moratorium on ever casually reading Tiptree. Sheldon. Whoever. Wonderful work. Not to be taken lightly. This is a tangent.

( Cut for space. )

Also, whatwasthatbook is still highly engaging.

Somewhere out there, there is Dethklok slashfic.

My heart died a little when I reached this conclusion.

So I'm walking home, nose in a book as is my wont, and pass by a trio of people sitting out on the steps of an apartment building, enjoying the (pleasant enough now that it's evening) air. Friendly enough tone, one of them calls out a question, and I respond.

"Harry Potter?"
"Harlan Ellison."

Currently waffling between going out and buying coffee and something small someplace so that I have a *damn table to write at*, and clearing a little more space in the closet and sitting down with The Willows and tea. You laugh, but I have a small walk-in closet, and it's mostly empty at the moment. It's a cosy kind of space.