And allergies that she dates back to the seventeenth century

Happy birthday, watermelontail!

In keeping with October, yesterday was really lovely. In the afternoon, I met with rushthatspeaks and we spent a couple of hours at the MFA, looking at Art Nouveau necklaces and incredibly awesome paintings by Zen priests, eccentric and beautiful and often both at once.* In addition to being my best cousin ever, she has become my exclusive supplier of Ysabeau Wilce, so last night I finished Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) (2008); like its predecessor, it is even more awesome than its subtitle suggests. I need to get my hands on the rest of Wilce's short stories. And in the evening, I had nusstorte and ginger-lemon-honey at Burdick's with nineweaving, who also presented me with a DVD of MirrorMask (2005) and a certifiably ridiculous birthday card, in which a grouper and a squid are giving the hairy eyeball to a sushi roll bobbing serenely through the deep; I love it. And it was clear and wind-crisp and sunlit all the way through; the ivy up the locust trees has turned a deep pageantry crimson, the driveway is filling up like a nine men's morris with maple leaves. I have an eyesplitting headache and seem to have turned one of my shoulderblades into a pretzel in my sleep and I'm still not actually in a bad mood. I read James Clavell's King Rat (1962) the night before last; re-read Scott O'Dell's The Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Serpent Never Sleeps and Nan Denker's The Bound Girl (1957); I am going to finish Patricia McKillip's The Bell at Sealey Head (2008) and run errands, probably not in that order; and tonight watch the final presidential debate.** My poem "Muse" has been nominated for the 2008 Dwarf Stars Award.

It's seasonally affective; the simple fact of autumn gives me joy.

* Hakuin Ekaku rocks. I have come to the conclusion that this country needs more Zen priests. Also damnatio memoriae, although this sentiment has nothing to do with ink paintings. I just remember it every time I walk past the Egyptian statues.

** And The Daily Show. And, probably, The Colbert Report. After three years in which he made not a blip on my radar, Stephen Colbert endeared himself to me so completely with his rant about the Large Hadron Collider and proper quotation and d20's that I've been watching at least his opening statements more nights than not. Please tell me this doesn't mean I've finally joined the mainstream.