Sorry for my long absence here. I’ve been too busy enjoying life to post about it. In fact, I’ve started to post a couple times recently and not gotten very far. So, since I don’t seem to have the stamina for a long post, here are some bullet items:

• First, the bad news: As plumtreeblossom posted here, her lovely grey Siamese Rowley was diagnosed with kidney disease on Saturday. But evidently it hasn’t gotten too bad yet, and the vet says he’ll definitely get some weight back with a low-protein diet and subcutaneous fluids, and it might even cure him. So we’re very glad we took him in. (He’d been gradually but very steadily been losing weight over six months or so.)
• Everything else is good, starting with a lovely visit to see eisa in New York City a couple weekends ago, which involved good food (as always) and meeting a couple of her friends. It also involved getting introduced to a new TV show (on DVD), whereon more later.
• Mare and I saw Theatre@First’s production of The Winter’s Tale, excellently directed by dietrich. Loved the staging, loved the somewhat quirky play, loved the performance. Congratulations to all!
• The news from the vet was not good, but it was great to be there for plumtreeblossom and Rowley, and I’m really glad we got him to the vet. And that morning plumtreeblossom cooked me banana pancakes and bacon. She must love me!
• Besides The Winter’s Tale, I’ve been enjoying a lot of classic or retro movies and literature:
• On the bus on the way to New York, I finished the utterly bizarre Edison’s Conquest of Mars (Wikipedia; Gutenberg). ( Cut for length. )
• Preparatory to starting Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I read Pride and Prejudice, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The funnier bits reminded me a little of Saki.
• plumtreeblossom and I watched a DVD she bought of a 1964 adaptation of The First Men in the Moon, which we both enjoyed a lot. ( Cut for length. )
• The TV show eisa introduced me to was Mad Men, which is retro in a different sort of way. ( Cut for length: Mad Men vs. Star Trek. )
• And it’s not historical or retro, but I also watched a weird French movie called La Moustache. ( Cut for length. )

OK, that was fairly long after all. Now it’s time for me to go to bed. Good night, all!

Found via omegabeth:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open the book to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the next few sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

 ‘What about if it’s got an urn or a plinth or a potted plant?’ said Nobby.
 ‘Have you got one in mind, Nobby?’ said Colon suspiciously.
 ‘Yes. The Goddess Anoia* Arising from the Cutlery,’ said Nobby. ‘They’ve got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three i’s in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.’

That’s watchmen Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon in a museum discussing when pictures of nude women are Art, and when they’re just dirty pictures, in Terry Pratchett’s Thud. The footnote explains that “Anoia is the Ankh-Morpork Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers.”

So a few months ago I read Stiff: The Curious History of Human Cadavers, by the smart, funny, and irreverent Mary Roach. I loved it.

Today, on my way home from dropping plumtreeblossom off at her house, I overheard on NPR that Mary Roach had a new book out about the science of sex. It’s called Bonk.

You can bet I placed an order as soon as I got home.

The good: plumtreeblossom and I got to go see The Golden Compass last night. I found it really really compressed compared to the rather thoughtfully-paced book it’s based on, but I loved it. Lyra’s Oxford was much as I had imagined it, and Iorik and Lee were plucked right out of my head. The world was a bit more steampunky than in the book, but I didn’t mind that. The acting was good. I’m so glad I saw it. And I’m very glad that plumtreeblossom enjoyed it, too, not having read the book. (She’s excited to read the series now.) And, barring production problems, there are two more movies to look forward to!

We had an unplanned intermission when there was a fire alarm and the building was evacuated, but when we started to see people streaming back into the building as we were walking towards the T we decided to go back in and see what was up, and since it had only been 10min or so since the alarm, they resumed all the movies. We saw some smoke or steam coming from a nearby building; I presume that’s what the alarm was about, but I’m not sure. The Religious Right is up in arms about this movie — as well they should be; the books are delightfully subversive —, so plumtreeblossom’s first thought was a bomb threat.

More recent good stuff include dinner with plumtreeblossom at The Cheesecake Factory near my work on Wednesday, pasta and interesting liqueurs with cathijosephine on Thursday, and brunch at Johnny D’s this morning (with live jazz guitar).

The bad: I have a bad cold. I had hoped it would just be a mild day-or-so, but I feel really crummy today. I am probably going to go to bed soon. (I really hope plumtreeblossom doesn’t come down with this, but that seems pretty implausible.) On the other hand, I have the weekend to rest. On the other other hand, I had planned on doing a lot of work on the house this weekend, and instead I’m mostly going to be resting and trying to get better.

Net balance is quite good, though.

I finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which my lovely plumtreeblossom gave me) last night on the T. Spoilers and commentary in my first comment below. (I didn’t want to just put them behind a cut-tag, since some people have LJ configured to auto-expand cut tags when they go to somebody’s journal directly.)

There are spoilers in the comments.

I recently started Miranda July’s collection of short stories, No one belongs here more than you, based completely on the awesomeness of her web site about the book, which she drew on her refrigerator and stove. It rocks. Yes, the web site, too, but I meant the book. I’m about a third of the way through it. It’s more or less what you’d expect from the web site, but creepier, in excellent ways.

+: I got to bed unusually early last night, and got an unusually large amount of sleep.
-: Despite that, when my alarm went off I was incredibly tired, and hit snooze umpty-zillion times, and was late using my light box for the first time since I started using it.
(-: And I actually think the light box is more trouble than it’s worth, although I should probably give it a couple more weeks.)
+: Despite getting a late and slow start, I felt like I had a reasonably productive day at work.
++: And afterwards I got to hang out with plumtreeblossom and docorion and mud_puppy at Namaskar and have yummy Indian food.
-: My yummy Indian food was somewhat less yummy than it might have been, because I forgot to ask for no cilantro and no tomatoes.
+: plumtreeblossom’s yummy Indian food was highly yummy, as was the bread.
+: I got to hear some more of docorion’s fun stories.
+: plumtreeblossom gave me an awesome May Day present, an interactive book (not quite a pop-up book, but along those lines, with flaps to open and things to unfold) about pirates! It even has a compass and some jewels embedded in the front cover! Between the compass and the maps I’m sure to find some booty!
+: I got to unburden myself to plumtreeblossom a bit about my medical concerns (well, vent, really; she’s heard it all before).
++: And tomorrow I have an ENT appointment which I am really hopeful about.
+: And after dinner we hung out and chatted over tea at Diesel.
+: I drank a lot of tea at Diesel. And a lot of water and lassi at Namaskar. This is called “foreshadowing”.
-: This fire sure delayed my ride home. Instead of a train straight through from Davis to Quincy Center, it was a Red Line train from Davis to Kendall (where I could faintly smell smoke on the air), a shuttle bus from Kendall to Lechmere, the Green Line from Lechmere to Park Street, and the Red Line from Park Street to Quincy Center.
-: Boy howdy did I have to pee by the time I finally got home.
-: And I’m too tired to deal with the fridge, which I seem to have been attempting to create life from primordial ooze in.
-: And I think I’m too tired to do laundry.
++: But I’m about to go to sleep!
+++: And by this time tomorrow I might know more about my breathing problems and might even have a plan for what to do about them!

I’m really sleepy, so I don’t have time to do justice to my lovely NYC trip to visit K. and hang out with cathijosephine and her mom, but I can’t go without posting something about it, so very briefly:

Had a lovely time catching up with K., telling her about my life since she saw me last and hearing about her travels (notably Vienna) and her music and multimedia projects. It was great! She’s doing some amazing stuff (which I’m not sure I should talk about since they’re in progress) that I look forward to hearing more about. And I got to see her delightful apartment, which looks like it works really well for her. Yay for a good work- and living-space! And she took me to a scenic lookout over the Bronx and a scenic (no, really!) lookout over New Jersey, and took me to her favourite local Indian takeout place.

Sunday I met cathijosephine and her mother (who is in New York for a conference this week) for brunch, and then we had a nice long walk from 32d Street to Chinatown — stopping in at a makeup store, a goth/fetish clothing store, and THE MOST HUGEST COSTUME STORE EVAR which was like Hallowe’en in April on our way. In Chinatown, we met K. and A., and wandered around Chinatown for a bit, stopping into a bakery for yummy baked goods and bubble tea. (Or in my case, bubble coffee.)

Then K., A., and cathijosephine’s mom bade us farewell at the bus pick-up, and cathijosephine and I rode back to Boston, getting here around 9. It was great weather, and light out for most of the trip back. The bus was run by some other bus company, filling in for Fung Wah to deal with overflow, and it took a different (and more scenic) route out of the city than I’ve ridden before. On the bus I finished Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, and cathijosephine finished her nap, and both of those things made me happy.

(By the way, I highly recommend Dreams from My Father. It makes me wish Barack Obama would hurry up and get elected President already and get his eight years over with so he can get back to his true calling as a writer.)

Had a doctor's appointment yesterday. Now I have lots more doctor's appointments to make: ophthamologist, another ENT besides the ENT I already have an appointment scheduled with (this guy does ears, so my doctor wants me to see him about a few bouts of dizziness I've had), and another appointment with my PCP in a month or so. And I still want to make that appointment with the neurologist that I haven't gotten around to making. Well, no, I actually don't, but I ought to. :-) Although I think really the throat ENT is the one that's likeliest to make a difference. I think I just need my throat Roto-Rooted.

On a lighter note, had a lovely time with plumtreeblossom at one of elusiveat's reading nights. I must own a copy of Thomas Wharton's The Logogryph. There was a lot of other nifty stuff read, including an wonderful original story by RED SHIFT!!! (who needs to get a LiveJournal account so I can stop typing all that fancy HTML when I mention him here). And this morning has been delightful too. At one point (after I'd taken off my mask for the morning but while we were still snuggling in bed) I was spooning plumtreeblossom, she was spooning her cat Rowley, and her cat Benjamin was curled up on my pillow behind my head. Perfect kind of morning.

On my trip to Hawai‘i (mostly during my flights), I finished a couple Pratchett books, Soul Music (about Music with Rocks In) and Interesting Times (about the Agatean Empire, with its complex politics, Great Wall, and Forbidden City). Today on the T on my way to see plumtreeblossom, I finished Moving Pictures (about Holy Wood and the spell it casts on people), out of order. I had actually started it before the trip, but, um, I dropped it in the toilet, and then didn’t feel quite so excited about reading that particular copy any more.

I also finished Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope in Hawai‘i, and appreciated it a lot. He (or his ghostwriter, I’m not sure, but I suspect he wrote a lot of it) is not as good a writer as he is a speaker, but it’s still a very engaging, interesting, and thought-provoking book, and makes me feel good about the notion of him as president (although to be fair that’s a notion I felt pretty good about to start with).