Reading: A.S. Byatt, Biographer's Tale;

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost

In the midst of: Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter

On deck: Invisible Man; Don Quijote

Moving: weights

22 March 2002: Date Night

When we brought the futon up, we did so because we had no couch and wanted to read in the sun without television. Also for fireside snogging. We had caprese salad and crab salad on melba toast, we toasted ourselves by the fire, and we snogged.

We can't have fires on Red Days or when it's too cold or windy, so this is only the third or fourth fire we've had all winter. If we didn't have a fireplace, I would miss it more than four times a year. But I do love a cozy fireplace. We use a combination of fake logs and actual wood, the actual wood coming from deliberate pruning and the nectarine tree's self-amputations and some pine logs we brought from the second apartment--we didn't use the fireplace last winter at all. Despite that fires are inefficient and polluting and whatever else, I hope always to have a fireplace. Gas, if necessary, though I would miss the crackling of real logs. Fake logs don't sound right either. To me, houses without fireplaces lack some vital thing, a heart or a focal point. Even though I don't use it as often as I ought to, to deserve it.

And as it turns out, the living room looks lovely in firelight too, even without a Christmas tree in the other corner.