I look fatter with my hair down.

Reading: Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon.

Also, Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road. Überboss said it was a hoot, and I admit I doubted him, because how could any Southern novel, full of incest and starvation because it is a Southern novel, be a hoot?
I should know better than to doubt him.

Moving: weights and a 2K swim

Listening: Graceland

14 July 2001: Malleable

Nourishing my long-neglected medieval geekdom. On Sunday and Monday, yes I am going to watch the TNT miniseries of "The Mists of Avalon," even though I'll hate it. Next weekend, I am going to go to a Ren Faire for the first time in nine years. Also I've been writing to ABW more lately than I have for a while, and she is a living breathing employed medievalist who not only has a paying non-academic job in her field but also has had a paper accepted for Kalamazoo. Also, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is being re-released on the big screen, which is going to make me delirious if I attend with the right people.

I'm so malleable. I've exchanged more email with PSA in the past week than generally happens over the course of a year. ABW makes me revel in my medieval nerdliness; PSA is why my internal jukebox has been playing its recent selections. "Head Over Heels" and "Sunset Grill" from Songs from the Big Chair and Building the Perfect Beast, respectively. (Other big HLV albums were Unforgettable Fire and Born in the U.S.A.; ah, 1985). Tears for Fears now gives me the shivers and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is an excellent reason to mute the credits of both "Dennis Miller Live" and "Peter's Friends." Of those four albums, I would still voluntarily listen only to U2 and "Boys of Summer," which is one of my all-time favorite pop songs.

No, it's not. It is in the top 50, though, maybe only because it gets Permanent Nostalgia status.

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Doing weights this morning I tried to move up a level in triceps. This would have nothing to do with HAO's telling me she can do however many sets of however many reps of tricep dips, of course. I shredded my triceps. Just in time for my swim to stretch them out again. I did two kilometers. I was going for two more laps so I could say I did 2.2K or one pound's worth of swimming, but that only amused me for a split second. I decided only a person who had watched "Pulp Fiction" the night before would be amused at all.

I put in Graceland after I finished the "Pulp Fiction" soundtrack. I seat-dance in the car and in restaurants; today for the first time I weight-danced, jimmying on the backrest between sets. That cracked me up.

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Today we planed some screens to fit them in the newly painted frames, unstrangled my poor sunflowers of bindweed (me), painted the front door to match the flat bits of trim (RDC), worked more with the windows (RDC), turned the compost pile (me), and cleaned up the front yard from last Sunday's windstorm (me), and listened to White Ladder. A good day.

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Note: this is not my leg.

RDC is having a lot of fun with the macro mode on his camera. Here he's caught Blake in mid tail-zip from a much better angle than I have ever managed. Looks a savage, doesn't he? And vaguely foolish? And twisted like a pretzel? His body runs straight left to right in this shot: his shoulders jut from his breast, he's got his neck turned left 90 degrees, his tail bent up another 90 degrees, and his back folded in half so he can reach the base of his own tail and then whrrrp the feather through his beak.

Dogs. Who needs 'em? *

* I don't mean this.