Hi, there. Miss me?

There’s really no good reason I haven’t updated in five days, unless you count distracting concern over the state of our lemon tree as a good reason, which might be stretching things a bit. (The poor thing’s leaves have been yellowing and dropping, which isn’t necessarily serious—but since the possible causes of this symptom include both over-watering and under-watering, the problem has proven a little difficult to treat with any confidence.)

Mostly I’ve just been having a boring sort of week/month after the headlong tumble into travel and friendship that was the first quarter of my year. Work just at the moment is steady, predictable, and full of the usual small irritations that make it what it is; the weather has been improving by leaps and bounds, but because work is steady right now I haven’t been taking proper advantage of it, and so I am only sniffing in very brief breaths the delicious perfume of this very late spring. I have done a few lovely things in the past few days, though.

I went to hear Mary Roach, whose science writing I have loved since 2004, speak about her latest book. I am happy to report that Mary was charming, funny, spoke about sex in an extremely relaxed and forthcoming manner, and was also wearing a really great skirt.

I ordered opera tickets for me and Ross, so next Saturday I too will be wearing a really great skirt and listening to various bellow-lunged men sing about jealousy, betrayal, and revenge. I really like the music in Don Giovanni, which isn’t hard since after all, it is Mozart—but mostly, I confess, I am excited about finally, finally getting to use our inherited opera glasses in their proper setting.

In an effort to hate my Windows laptop slightly less, I had Ross install Ubuntu on it in a dual-boot so I could try it out. I’m sitting on the couch typing away quite happily, and I love the way my desktop looks, so I think the plan worked. I’m always a bit of a cranky open-source software user—I complain a lot about things that don’t work the way I think they should—but usually I’m secretly pleased enough. I just like to rile Ross up a little. ;-)

All right, readers-mine. It’s time to get up to some proper mischief. I’ll see you soon; sooner than soon, I promise, unless a good reason turns up.

I know, I keep doing this, don’t I? I was going to be better tonight, too, and then my evening got really infuriating and now I’m exhausted from righteous frustration.

But there is a bright side. Here it is:

I am made of positive.

1) Made hummus.

2) Killed blender.

3) Made small talk with strangers.

4) Did not die.

Work is catching up with me again. I’m taking breaks, but mostly to do things like this:

Three formations of yawping geese flew back north over my head in the deepening sky. I guess they believe winter’s over.

Three stars, rare as diamonds, were there to be seen, two bright and one shy.

Today felt like this.