7 June 2002

I've been re-reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon lately. I'd forgotten just how funny it is. Stephenson is good for humor - the very first book of his that I ever read, Snow Crash, has a main character whose name is "Hiro Protagonist."

But Cryptonomicon is quite a bit longer, and it's full of things that just knock me on the floor with laughter.

For instance - just this morning, I finished reading a section about a character's astonishingly tedious post-college job. Only instead of just saying it was tedious, there's about a page where he talks about that if the character had known at the age of nine what he'd be getting into, he'd have been absolutely thrilled, because he'd been obsessed with staple removers - and here he was in a job where he got to use one for hours at a time!

Okay, I'm sure it's not everyone's cup of tea, and it makes for a very long book (over 900 pages) but I'm loving it.

How many times in this journal, over the last three years or so, have I said, "Thank goodness it's Friday?"

I'm going to say it again: Thank goodness it's Friday.

Not that this week has been particularly bad, but it's been slow. I have hopes that today I'll get some work to do, but I already know the work that's waiting for me is documentation, so it's not going to be all that exciting when I do get it.

Weekend. Kick back, do some writing, do some reading, do some Halling.

Make some backups in anticipation of my upgrade to OS X.

Oh, yeah, that's the other news - our tax return finally came the other day, so Matt and I both placed our standing orders. We're both upgrading to OS X. I ordered an iPod, and Matt ordered a digital camera. We're both fairly quivering with excitement.

Of course, I'm doing my usual pre-computer-change jitters, too, but I'll get over it. I'll spend part of my weekend burning CD backups of my important data and application installers, and make sure I've written down all those passwords and registration keys, and stuff like that. (You know, the normal precautionary stuff I should be doing semi-regularly anyway, just in case.)

It's going to be a busy few days for the Hall.

Two more sessions - one fairly short, the other probably fairly long - will wrap up my little Scum plot. (I really need to hurry up and write the story companion to that.) Both of those sessions will probably happen this weekend.

Last night, K.T. and I ran Kevil and Loria's wedding in Alanis. Wherein they finally met Diya - yay!

(Though if things go according to plan, it'll be another six months before they marry him. I'm sort of curious to see if things stay on track, actually.)

But for now, Kevil is plenty happy with what he's got. Which is good, because I'm about to make the Scum very unhappy.

--Liz