My mom gave me a copy of "Beloved" while I was at home, since I mentioned it was last Tuesday's book group reading. I read some on the train home, but by Tuesday was still barely halfway through. I went to the meeting anyway, and the fact that there were less people than usual just made it more fun, to my mind. It's been my bus-ride reading for the rest of the week, and I'm close to the end now. I like the feeling of being dropped into the middle of a scene and being forced to dig a little to get my bearings, and "Beloved" does a lot of that. And I know I'd have fun figuring out more things if I read it again--though I don't love it enough that I'll do that right away.

I borrowed my sister's copy of the complete "Firefly" episodes, and we made it through the first disk's worth (3 episodes) this week. It's been fun, though the last one was a bit too much horror for either of us (I could do without these "reaver" guys that keep popping up), especially watching it right before bedtime as we did last night.

We'd passed on watching a movie with Paul and Ajit, mainly just because we feeling too sleepy after our early dinner at Pizza House with Dave's parents and the jugglers.

I spent most of today gathering a little more detail on a very annoying bug in my privacy code and fooling around with git, while listening to the shortest song from every album that I own (skipping a few that didn't have anything under 5 minutes or so; Coltrane's half-hour "Om" came up on shuffle a few days ago, and that's quite enough of that, thanks.)

Yesterday almost made us think summer had come, with the temperature reaching 70. This morning there was snow on the ground, and the wind was bitter on the walk home by way of the coop.

Friday night my high school friend Darren stopped by for dinner. I heated up some of my mom's Turkey soup, and made some whole wheat muffins and a Waldorf salad (based on my mom's suggestions--she makes it with yogurt and some honey and orange juice, instead of the usual mayonnaise). He seems to enjoy hanging out with my family as well, and after dinner he, Helen, and my mom, and I played a game of Carcasonne, and then (having worn out mom) a fiercely contested three-player game of Bohnanza. Helen and Darren and I then sat around and talked mainly about movies until he left for the night.

I checked my email just as I was ready to go to bed and found a surprise message from MJ, a good friend, fellow math student, and housemate from Reed. I'd known for a while that he was trying to get a job in the area, but it had been held up and I hadn't heard from him in a while, so I was starting to wonder.

Anyway, he'd been in his new apartment in Baltimore for a few weeks now and had just gotten his internet service up and running, hence the email. So saturday he stopped by earlier in the aftermoon and helped out with dinner--this time split pea soup, salad, and little pre-made frozen mushroom pocket things, and then we watched a fun episode of the Jeeves and Wooster TV series that I last remember seeing--oh, maybe in high school?

Sunday I took the train home, got little sleep (as usual), had a nice breakfast at Angelo's with Sara, and barely managed to keep my eyes propped up through a day of work before coming home and sleeping 12 hours.

Tuesday and Wednesday were a little better, though I'm still feeling a little tired and unproductive at work.

I met my cousin Laura at a theater in Laurel to watch a silly Bollywood comedy. But due to some schedule confustion it turned out instead to be rather serious movie--still Bollywood, but there was only one song! and it was was completely in character and had a function in the plot! OK, but it (Eklavya) was actually pretty good. The photography was quite nice, and the scenery very dramatic, so it was worth seeing on the big screen. And it was good to get the chance to talk to Laura afterwards.

The drive there and back was a minor adventure for me, since I very rarely drive, even more rarely around here, and never before to this particular place; and since it was my sister's car, which I'd never driven before. And it's a stick shift, to boot--I learned on a stick, I can cope, but it just takes me a little time to get to used to the clutch on every new car I drive. That said, it turned out fine. I got there and back without getting lost or threatening anyone's life.

Other than that, life here in the Fields household has been pretty routine. After pizza Monday night, we had salad with fried vegetable sandwiches (ha--pizza again in disguise) Tuesday, and then butternut squash soup and spaghetti Wednesday night. And I've been getting some work done during the day. I make up for not having coworkers around by being more active on email and irc, which makes it all feel more social than you'd expect.

My dad left today for a long-looked-forward-to trip to ski in Colorado. With me leaving this weekend, that'll leave just my sister to look after our mom. But she seems to be doing well enough that it shouldn't be a problem.

I don't think the kitchen setup in our apartment is really ideal. But then I cook someplace else and I can't find something, say a knife, exactly like the one I'd use at home, and I get frustrated. I did dinner on my own tonight and felt pretty incompetent, though I guess it ended up OK in the end.

My mom's still doing well, and my sister got back from her trip to Norway this afternoon. She claims she took 1200 pictures. Gack. But I suppose it means continuing demand for people working in filesystems....

I stayed up too late last night, and feel a bit strung out. Tonight I need to get to bed a little earlier.

I made a little progress on the git documentation Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night we watched "Top Hat". I'd never seen a Fred and Ginger movie, and I'd been meaning to ever since reading Connie Willis's "Remake". I thought it was fun, but my parents rolled their eyes at it.

Sunday morning I went to the Takoma farmers market and Trader Joe's with my dad. My parents suggested I take the metro from there and spend the day downtown, which might have been smart, but I didn't really feel like going anywhere. It was fun anyway to get out of the house for a little while. I even enjoyed grocery shopping.

Sunday night we tried watching "Serenity", but my mom said she was tired and that it was too much of a war movie for her. I'd remembered the few episodes of "Firefly" I'd seen as a having more dialog (and more fun), and not so much fighting, but I watched the rest and found it really was a (quite grim) war movie. Pretty good, though.

Tommorow morning my mom and dad are off to Baltimore to see the eye doctor. My sister arrives in the afternoon. I agreed to have dinner ready around 5:30 and I'll need to plan a bit.

I was able to work all day yesterday, though I didn't get done quite what I'd hoped to.

My mom is doing well, so all I need to do is help with eye drops and some minor household chores. I have a couple laptops I brought with me and some space in my dad's office, and while I work my mom generally naps or listens to audiobooks.

Today's Saturday, and my dad's away skiing for the day. I'm going to try to get a little git documentation work done.

Tuesday my parents found out that my mom would be able to get her operation on Wednesday. Amtrak is great for a situation like this--a few minutes on their website and I had a one-way next-day reservation to DC for $86. So Wednesday I brought my luggage with me to work, then walked to the station (another big plus for Amtrak) at 7:30, where I met Sara. We had a nice dinner--sandwiches and beer--sitting at the bar at Casey's, right across the street, then Sara left me to the first leg of my trip, the bus ride to Toledo. The bus ride was routine, but the train was delayed on its way to Toledo and we didn't board till 2:30am.

I didn't sleep very well at night, but enjoyed the ride the next day anyway, and managed to get a nap then.

From Union Station I took the metro to Fort Totten, then the K6 to Chalmers. Within a block of home, my parents passed me in their car--I hadn't been sure if they'd be home that night at all, and didn't have any keys, so it was a relief to see them, and to see that my mom seems to be doing quite well.

Tomorrow I'll try to work most of the day--we'll see how that goes.

My mom is approaching her third surgery in as many months, and though she's generally in good health and is recovering very well, still she needs some help during the recovery period, and my dad and sister have both done more than their fair share. So when we hear that her next surgery is scheduled I'll get on a train or plane and head for DC for a week or two to help out. They have a good internet connection there and lots of space, so the idea is that I may be able to continue working for at least some of that time. Though it's an unfortunate event, I'm looking forward to visiting for a while.

My new thinkpad is set up now, running Fedora Core 6 with a few problems--wireless requires binary drivers that I haven't tried installing, and suspend-to-RAM is a little flaky. This is the first distribution/hardware combination I've used with working Compiz support, which means it optionally does all sorts of silly animations--the desktops appear to be on sides of a spinning cube, windows wobble when they're moved, menus fade in and out, etc. When I'm feeling a little down I just wiggle some windows around a little and it perks me up. No doubt the novelty will wear off in another week. Anyway, the extra pixels (1400x1050 vs 1024x768, on the same 12" screen) and the extra processing power (the previous thinkpad was three years old) are a big help.

Today was a big pizza week. Wednesday and Friday we ordered from Silvio's--unusual but very tasty pizza. Saturday we had some pizza with Paul and Ajit and watched "Ninja Thunderbolt" (abysmal, but with some funny moments) and "Zazie Dans Le Metro" (very strange, great fun, surprisingly faithful to the book, to the extent that's possible--worth another look). And today Sara made some yummy pizza with Brie, walnuts, eggplant, tomatoes, onions, and zuchini.

Most of the ingredients (including the pre-made pizza dough--we've both been very busy, Sara especially, so we're more eager than usual to accept any conveniences) were the result of a Trader Joe's expedition on my bike Saturday morning, which went pretty well. It didn't take much longer than an hour, and was reasonably comfortable despite the weather. It can be a challenge keeping warm on the downhills without overheating on the uphills, but I did pretty well this time, thanks in part to the recent gift of a nice thin but warm balaklava from my dad.

One of the fun things about my current work is the contact with people all over the world. There's a group of friendly people in France that we work with a little. I've only met two of them, just one time, so we mostly communicate by email. I mentioned to one recently that it had been an idle fantasy of mine to maybe find short-term work in France some day, and he's been forwarding me lots of helpful links. So I need to take some time to sift through the confusing array of projects and institutions and see if I can find anything of interest to me that looks practical....

The San Jose airport is actually very close to downtown--from a quick glance at google maps it looked like it couldn't be more than 3 miles--and I didn't have a lot of luggage, so I figured it might be fun to try walking it Friday morning.

Not surprisingly, I got a little lost at the end in the pedestrian-hostile spaghetti surrounding the airport, but other than that it worked OK--it took about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I probably could have do it in under an hour another time.

The flights home were crowded, and I was uncomfortable and bored. I did a little work, and read a few chapters of "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler".

Back in early December I ordered a new thinkpad, which was originally supposed to arrive in a couple weeks. Then they delayed it until the beginning of February and then, when I checked at Connectathon, to the end of February. At that point I was finally totally fed up, and planned to cancel it and order something different as soon as I got back. And that was exactly the point when I got the email message saying it had shipped. So it arrived at my office last week, and I had the cab driver stop by work on the way back from the airport so I could pick up the new laptop and drop off some other stuff.

Today I spent the morning wrestling with the linux install, and the afternoon at a Chinese New Year's party hosted by a coworker of Sara's, with lots of dumplings (which we got to help fold up) and other good food.

It's very cold and snowy here in Ann Arbor, and so I'm taking great advantage of all my winter clothing: long underwear, turtleneck, sweater, down mittens,....