Reading: Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

Moving: walked 5.2 miles

Watching: "Alice Adams," because it stars Katharine Hepburn.

19 January 2002

A good day. I love the stretch of the Highline Canal through the optimiscally named Preserve. We saw a kite and a much bigger hawk we couldn't identify and a West Highland terrier. We traded off the hand-strengthening grippy thingie and the new toy I bought belatedly for RDC's stocking, a Dynaflex, which works your muscles isometrically with gyroscopes. Or something. Grocery-shopping. I forgot to pick up CLH's and my oeuvres from the timesuck pottery place. We went to two open houses and left liking our house best, despite our lack of built-ins and cove ceilings.

This was a good thing, because last night we watched "Alice Adams," in which Katharine Hepburn comes from a lower-end middle class family who live in what might have looked, in 1935, like an old-fashioned, pokey little house, but which looked enviable to us. Arts & Crafts, lots of built-ins like an inglenook and bookshelves and a whatever it's called between the dining room and kitchen, and tapered half columns. Two staircases. No foyer. We liked everything but its front door.

It's still Yuletime, if procrastinating friends are any measure. In the past week I've received a letter from ABW with a picture of her boys; another from PLT and STL with their daughters; a card from friends stranded in Lewiston, Idaho, with a picture of their son Dallas (guess where Bob's from); a baby shower invitation from TJZD; and a thick letter from Nisou with lots of pictures of me and her, of TJZD and her, and of her with the growing Bulge.

I have letters to write, a scrapbook to put together, photographs to catalog, receipts to file. Yet why do I hate filing at work? Because all the stuff isn't Mine, organized to My system.

Blake really wants me and RDC to be in the same room, so I'm off.