Reading: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost

In the midst of: A.S. Byatt, Biographer's Tale; Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter

On deck: Suburban Nation; Invisible Man; Don Quijote

Moving: hrm

Watching: "ER"

8 March 2002: Fog

New evidence of my complete ignorance: during a clip of Tracey Ullman on CNN, maybe druing Larry King, I said, "Tracey Ullman's British?" RDC said incredulously, "Of course." Oops.

How would I know that? I have seen her in "I Love You to Death," "Small Time Crooks," and as Ally McBeal's psychiatrist. I know "The Simpsons" got its start on her show. The Simpsons are Usan, not British. Ergo.

---

I cannot wrap my head around this being true.

---

Today is foggy. Sometimes I forget that this happens. This year, February had no fog, and it's always gone by April, so that's good. But Denver in the fog is claustrophic and saddening to an extreme. In a normal place with hills and trees, you're surrounded by hills and trees anyway, all the time, so the lack of horizon doesn't affect your outlook. Here, especially in a downtown building, you're surrounded on all sides by nothingness. I never hated fog until I came here.

In my first year here, after I had been at Hateful for three months and been granted stingy health care, I made an appointment for my first physical in years. I don't know how I happened on the name I did--a female close by, then as now my only two criteria. There was to be a get-to-know-you visit as well as an examination, so at first I was shown into her office. It was foggy that March day, and the windows looked out into damp, palid nothingness.

The doctor came in and said in a perfectly ordinary way, "Hello, how are you today?"

Well. I might have said, "Not very well" before bursting into tears. She was taken aback, as well she might be, but what I remember six years later is how kind she was. She was a general practitioner, supposed to be interested in all facets of her patients' lives, and so she was. We talked for quite a while, her asking me why I was sad and my reeling off reasons, like Denver and fog and no trees and no lakes and homesickness and my sister's planning to move back to Boston and guilt about Percy's death and badness with PLT and not knowing anyone and hating my job and its not only not being satisfying but in fact being soul-sucking and RDC & my struggles with our first year of marriage two thousand miles away from everything and being wretchedly poor and so forth. She asked me about several things, gauging this and that, suggesting improvements, and then asked me about exercise.

I completely perked up. "That's a good thing. I am getting lots of exercise." Hateful's one redeeming quality was the free gym in the basement and the Lifestep I owned. "I'm much fitter and have lost a lot of fat." She was so pleased! And so kind. I never saw her again; I didn't know I was going to have a $50 copay and when Hateful and I parted company in June, I had no health insurance until the following spring, when Dot Org brought me downtown and introduced me to the Kaiser herd of doctors.

She was so kind.

Anyway, that's what I need to keep in mind when I make excuses about exercise.