There's worser things than marchin' from Umballa to Cawnpore

Stuff. Some happened! It's been that kind of week already.

The Brandeis reunion on Saturday was a lot of fun. I got to see kraada, skotodes, fleurdelis28, fellow-alumni and spouses whose livejournal names I don't know, one bona fide instance of a person I hadn't seen since graduation (I guess this is what Facebook is for), and one curious-eyed seven-month-old who hadn't existed the last time I saw her parents. A rather poignant moment when she reached out from her car seat and grabbed the front of my shirt, because she has figured out where food comes from, just not that not everyone has it on tap. I told her she had Andy Serkis eyes. derspatchel met me on campus in the afternoon, just in time for the ice cream social. Mostly we climbed around the non-Euclidean hallways of Usen Castle; I showed Rob my senior year room, whose furniture was distressingly unchanged, and Joel and Jon tried to find the secret panel that leads to the stairwell to the roof, which some enterprising administrator turns out to have boarded up. We did not manage to locate the famous Door to Nowhere—an ordinary-looking fire door that opens onto a sheer three-story drop—but Rob believes me that it exists. The Rose Art Museum had one exhibit that left us all cold and one that Rob and I really liked. Dinner was loud and kind of generically party-ish, but since I met my first two friends at Brandeis while fleeing orientation events, it felt weirdly appropriate. I have a college T-shirt now.

Sunday was a great deal of public transit, a near-migraine, and a lot of people, but I nonetheless count it as a success, because if I hadn't gotten up at eight in the morning to catch all those buses, I wouldn't have seen nuqotw for an hour at brunch. (It turns out she lives close enough to my god-daughter that I will almost certainly see her the next time I visit strange_selkie and darthrami, but still. Also, when the invitation said "brunch," I think I was envisioning something like bagels, not strawberry rhubarb French toast, two kinds of tortilla española, two kinds of goat cheese, two kinds or at least sizes of muffins, and a plate of trout one of the hosts apologized for not personally smoking themselves. After which we had a great conversation about cooking anachronisms and I left with a vague desire to spit-roast some beef and read Consider the Fork.) I had to bolt at noon for the last Readercon meeting before the convention proper, which was taking place somewhere on MIT campus I'd never been. At least it put me in the right area to read Derek Jarman and meet Rob for dinner at CBC. Their track record with mussels continues: I wouldn't have thought that Hefeweizen was a good addition to coconut curry, but there wasn't much left in the bowl by the time I put down my spoon.

(The near-migraine was very unpleasant and probably a combination of dehydration, weather-changing, and muscle tension ratcheting up from my lower back, which I've pretty badly messed up. I helped gaudior heave some packaged cube shelving into a car on Wednesday and by Thursday night I couldn't even stand without pain. By Monday, my neck and shoulders had gotten into the act and I couldn't turn my head. Things are improved since then, but they're not resolved. I have been spending a lot of time wrapped in my rice-filled, microwaveable sheep.)

Monday was marked mostly by different kinds of pain, aftermath of a headache so bad Rob had to go to CVS for me the previous night because I couldn't deal with getting up from a bed in a dark room. It was not necessary that the MBTA should choose that afternoon to be capricious, so that after being passed by three 96s and two 94s and nothing resembling an 89 or an 80 at all, I had to walk home in the rain with a backpack's weight I really didn't want on my shoulders. The nice discovery: the deli in Ball Square was closed by six o'clock, but Ball Square Fine Wines & Liquors has a tiny sort of deli cooler and they sell goat brie cheaper than Stop & Shop. I did not buy it; I bought ham and cheddar and made myself an omelet as soon as I got home, the first in several months. I was vaguely worried I'd lost the knack. I flipped it twice without breaking, so probably not. Read slush for Strange Horizons all night. If you submitted a poem in April or May and have heard no response from me, query. ajodasso is reading now.

And last night there was bowling at Flatbread & Co. to celebrate the dismissal of the wingnut lawsuit that has been consuming the lives of a surprising number of people I knew since February; it was the first time I'd bowled since high school (moment of silence for Wal-Lex) and I sucked way less than I'd thought I would, especially with my shoulders and back. I came in third place out of five. Should like to repeat the experiment sometime when absolutely nothing in my spinal region hurts. Conversation was great, new LJ friends acquired, the restaurant gave ron_newman's lawyer free dessert. Came home and failed to sleep more than two hours despite repeated application of sheep. That's about where we are this afternoon.

I'm still pretty happy, though.