Reading: John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman

Listening: The Waterboys, "A Bang on the Ear," Fisherman's Blues. Happily, they banished Huey Lewis, which (he's not a who) intruded on my sacred being when I ventured into Fantastic Sam's for a bottle of shampoo.

Viewing: Mountains. Cold air. Earlier sunsets. My filthy apartment.

Moving: A longer walk home. Some abs. No Nordic Track.

Learning: What ALBF got up to all year.

5 January 2000: Home

Tuesday: Long day. Stopover in Dallas. No screaming from Blake, no dying from Blake. HAO was right there waiting for us. HAO and I caught somewhat up while RDC scampered out for Buddha's Delight. Vegetables? What are those?

Today in the mailbox was a key to one of the bigger boxes, as I expected, and there was two weeks' worth of mail. Everyone else's Christmas card. A great letter from DEDBG's sister ALBF about all her and her husband's doings this year. A photograph of PSA and his new bride. Photographs from her wedding from RRP. But the crowing photograph was a new wallet-sized one of the three V children. NAV, looking much like his father; NJV, looking like his mother; and MLV, nearly but not quite rivalling ZBD in absolute cuteness. NAV looks much older than four, but that's all he is: three weeks younger than my marriage. And MLV in a little velvet hat while her brothers wore regular little boy clothes, proving that little girls are much more fun to dress than little boys. And she'll be 20 months old before I get my first glimpse of her in the flesh.

My photographing coworker was sufficiently jealous of my new camera, but he must be enough of a film aficionado to have his preferences. I got Wild Rice Chicken from Organic Orbit for lunch and caught up on journals, most of them. I read Shape on the bus because I left Fowles in RDC's carry-on bag. And now I'm home, surrounded by stuff I really should unpack and Christmas stuff I should put away, except the tree lights I bought this year, strung on white wire, that I might keep up in the living room because we lack light in that corner.

I have to go unpack.

I am so glad to be home.

Later, somewhat unpacked and with groceries in the fridge, I'm still procrastinating about unpacking (I'm sitting at the Mac after all, where the clothes aren't), and I am appreciating my puppy-bird. He is on one foot right against my neck, beak in wing, which I can tell by how he shifts his weight but not by looking at him. To look at him I'd have to turn my head, which would disturb him. He's happy to be in his own house, without cats, without people who are used to an African Gray who can defend him- (or it-) self against the felines, without a five-year-old. We clipped his toenails tonight, which he never enjoys, and I was glad to have him back in safe surroundings where the better grip his talons provide isn't necessary, where a slip from a shoulder is just a glide to the floor instead of a drop into a waiting cat's maw.