I'm listening to some Republican drivel on NPR. "We need President Bush for the next four years because he can see down the road, beyond..." At that point, my irritation overrode any interest in the story. Where was this ability to see down the road and beyond when he sent in our military to Iraq, with not the faintest clue what to do with them once he "won" the war? When my son graduated from high school, we sat in the bleachers overlooking the 500 members of his graduating class. At that time, that's how many American men and women had died after the end of the conflict. Looking at them gathered in caps and gowns I wondered how Dubya has the nerve to say that we've won.

It really sickens me how he parades September 11th as his personal triumph and moment of glory. One might almost come to believe he planned it that way. "Oh, you want to fly planes into our buildings? Can...can you wait till I'm in charge? I'm gonna need something to look presidental about."

I have a lovely new reclining loveseat, in which I reclined and took a nap today. Mittens hopped up and curled onto my chest, purring. Purchase is a hit :)

Of course, as I sat down later knitting and listening to the radio, I wished I had an end table. So I put aside my work basket and hit the shops. I now have a lovely Chinese stand with a marble inset as well as a dark-stained cube into which I can hide clutter.

The stand came from a shop full of Chinese lacquerware and teak. Seeing all the Chinese stuff in one spot reminded me of the living rooms of my mother's friends -- plastic-covered white upholstery, black and red lacquer everywhere with inlays in metal and mother-of-pearl. We weren't allowed into these luxurious rooms; they were like museums with the best of everything in the house. I strolled through the crowed store where the proprietor informed me grandly that everything is made of real wood, no particles. It felt a bit naughty, as though somehow I'd snuck into an auntie's living room.

I bought the little stand. That sucker is heavy; the proprietor told no lies about the solidness of the wood. It has mother-of-pearl inlay. I put my huge fern on it and it looks very lovely.

The cube is plainly made and came from an American furniture store where they sell stuff with incredibly fake distressing. I hate that stuff, where you look at it and can see where someone's beat on the surface with some nails to leave gouge marks in regular patterns. The cube is non-distressed, other than by having been transported in the trunk of the Eclipse with the hatchback tied down over it. It's also very lovely.

It's starting to look more like a home now. All it needs is my husband :)

I wrote something today that I thought was rather lovely. It's a love story, because I am a hopeless romantic. I sent it on to my boss along with some of the other stuff I'd done and he wrote back, "Wow."

I get paid to do this. I agree: Wow.

Rob's visit went very quickly. :(

I'm sure his version of events will be a lot more interesting than mine. I dragged Rob out to see the $1,500 sofa, which he sat upon and worked it out mathematically for me. If I have the sofa for say, 20 years, then break the price down per month then by day to see what it really costs me, it came to something like 22 cents a day. "For less than the price of a cup of coffee a day, you could have this sofa," intoned Rob. "Or you could feed a starving child. Does a child starve or do you get this sofa?"

We then went to the less expensive furniture shop down the street where I purchased a loveseat in which both seats recline :) It'll be most excellent for video games. Yay! It gets delivered Saturday.

Broos joined us for a trip to the zoo. The "boys" convinced me that I didn't want to stand in line to see the panda bears, but we saw a variety of birds and beasts that made the trip a lot of fun. As we passed the giraffe exhibit, Rob noticed one of the concrete pillars in their enclosure was marked at various heights so zoo-goers could measure the giraffes. "Looks like they're expecting a robbery," he commented, bringing to my mind's eye the image of a masked giraffe holding up a local 7-eleven.

Post-zoo, we had a lovely dinner of red meat at Bully's in Del Mar. Rob reduced poor Broos to profanity when the waitress handed us our menus and Rob opened his up studiously saying, "Well! What kind of salads do they have here?"

Earlier today, Broos gamely arrived and we marched nearly 2 miles down the Los Penasquitos trail and nearly 2 miles back. We saw a cute little squirrel, some unidentifiable birds, a couple of finches, three horses (with riders) and a deer. Also many bikers and surprisingly, runners. It was roughly high noon and these chipper runners were running around! What possesses these people?

I have my door open, so Mittens is bravely exploring the outdoors. When something startles him, he dashes back in and lays on the little vinyl entry tiles. But with every step, he gets braver and bolder. Currently, he is sitting on the steps leading down and away from my apartment.

He seems so lonesome. I'm gone most of the day and night during the week, and while I try to pay attention to him, he ravens for more. Then I worry that I'm teaching him to whine till I pet him, so I resist. But he's really so cute, it's hard to say no. Unfortunately, Maggie just hates him, so when Rob brings her down, it's not going to be a happy reunion, at least on her part. He'll enjoy having someone around, but what he really needs is someone around who will love him back. He needs a different sort of cat-buddy.

Don't worry, Rob :) I'm not getting another cat while you aren't here to stop me. I'm just making an observation.

For now, anyway.

This is the sort of house I mean by salt box house. They're called salt box as they resemble the boxes where salt was stored once upon a time.

After stopping by work for a bit yesterday, I went furniture shopping up and down Miramar, which is near the office. I found the couch of my dreams, but it has a nightmare price: $1,500 -- and that's on sale. So after sitting in it several times, I sighed and went down the street before I did anything so foolish like buy the thing. I wandered into a store I'd never heard of before, Tuesday Morning. It's a small-scale Ross/TJ Max, without the emphasis on clothing. I got a variety of picture frames to try out on Suz's piece, a spiffy lap desk (so the laptop fan can breathe without burning a hole in my lap), some kitchen utensils and a gorgeous little Winnie the Pooh teapot, all for $40.

Buoyed by shopping success, I went further down the road to a strip mall of nothing but furniture places, and there I found my dining chairs. I really liked the ones Broos and I picked out at Ikea, but since there is apparently no day upon which these particular chairs would ever be in stock again, I resigned myself to looking elsewhere. My new chairs have a wrought iron frame and a thick fabric cushion. Indeed, the cushion is much thicker than the one I sat upon in the showroom, and I'm hoping some sitting will squish these down just a fraction as they're higher than I'd like. I almost left the shop after the salesperson told me that they wouldn't get any of these in for at least two weeks, perhaps more. Shades of Ikea!

"I'm having company come to visit on the 19th," I said, trying to make Rob's visit sound like a family reunion with second-cousins and all. I asked to buy the floor models; the salesperson demurred and said she'd check with the manager. She returned a bit later and announced that amazingly, four of these chairs had been found in the warehouse. Amazing! ;)

So my outside chairs are now outside. I have four lovely inside chairs that need some sitting upon. A pair of doves are building a nest in the eucalyptus outside my window, sending Mittens into a frenzy of longing for the good outdoors. Suz's needlework is framed and hanging in my hallway. I sat and looked at it last night and had a good missing her cry, then went back to screwing together chairs. I sincerely hope I will buy a couch that does not include on the label the words, "assembly required."

I've never lived in California before, so everything I encounter here is new to me and therefore fascinating. Since I've been here I have been creating my own fond little memories of places and things.

Then one day when Broos was driving us home from someplace, he pointed out my window (so I bit him) and said, "That's where Suz went to elementary school."

Every so often, he would point out something else (taking care not to point out my window any too directly again) and tell me something about whatever it is, relative to my Cosmic Twin. So as time is going by, I'm not only making my own memories of this place but I am adding in other memories that are not directly my own.

Last night after I came home from the weekly game night, I sat down with a box of treasures that Broos gave me. It's a box of Suz's crafting supplies, filled with embroidery hoops and thread, skeins of yarn, needles and cross-stitch fabric and patterns. With Mittens' help, I sorted out threads and put them away in the neat little plastic zip bags on rings that Suz had organized by color number -- how Monk is that! :)

When I finished sorting threads, I looked at the fabric scraps and patterns, putting those into order as well. At the bottom of the box I found a piece that Suz had almost finished, except for the border. It's a neat set of salt box houses and over them is a single word: "Welcome." I feel very welcome, indeed.

I wish I were a cat sometimes so I could floop onto the foot of the bed and pass out in a second. Mittens is sprawled out and relaxed and I'm tucked up at the head of the bed, pillows at my back. Sometimes, he'll sprawl out where my feet are supposed to go, so I end up sliding under the covers diagonally so I won't disturb him.

Tivo recorded Emeril Live for me, so I have that on. I forgot how funny he can be, even without a BAM! And he describes what he's doing so colorfully. He looks like he still enjoys cooking even after years of being in the spotlight. I hope that I continue to enjoy what I'm doing after years of doing it.

I so wish I'd had a full-time job working on games long before now. :( I figured out a script tonight without anyone's help, which would be a first for me. Today I spent time fixing bugs and typos. After ten hours of that, I'm exhausted but in a good way. If I weren't such an early-to-bed person, I'd have stuck around longer because I only have 10 bugs left to fix! I want to fix those bad boys! I feel as though everything else I've done work-wise was such a waste when I could have been doing something I really enjoy.

Let this be a lesson to us all. Do something you love as early as possible in your life so you can enjoy it longer :)

Last night I slept with the TV on. Night before last, I had trouble sleeping, and after roaming around the apartment looking for prowlers, I lay down and immediately fell into a most unhappy dream.

I was underwater in a pool and passed by another swimmer who had apparently just thrown up into their mask and was trying to remove the mask and reach the surface. I turned toward the stairs thinking that I should get out of the water and pull this person to safety when everything shifted and I was the person who couldn't get out of the water. I took a deep breath so I could get the energy to get out of the pool and realized I had inhaled under water which wasn't a good idea. It didn't hurt, though, and even as I drifted down I thought, "I'm going to die and it doesn't hurt. It's like dreaming." Then everything went black (except for, oddly enough, the little breath bar that showed how long I had left) and I bolted upright in bed.

So I slept with the TV on and didn't have another nightmare. When I did get up in the middle of the night, I watched an episode of Good Eats and went to sleep again.

When I was in high school, I wrote a parody of the John Denver classic 'Sunshine On My Shoulders' that went something like:

Sunburn on my shoulders

Makes me itchy

Sunburn on my shoulders

Makes me cry

Fortunately, that's not the area that's sunburned; I am sporting bright red kneecaps, from sitting on the grass next to Michelle and hugging my legs to my chest. Michelle has a gracefully painful red stripe along her leg because she sat much more gracefully than I. Broos is also sunburned on the legs, and because we're all kind of red in various places we are foregoing our planned Sunday stroll through the Los Penasquitos canyon which is near my apartment.

Instead, I'm doing laundry. :) And have been playing Knights of the Old Republic on my laptop, which doesn't exactly meet the game's system requirements, adding a level of excitement to the game that I didn't have with the X-box version. Whenever my party steadfastly runs in circles instead of progressing where I want them to go, I must remind myself that anyone who plays a game on a computer that it's not designed for must suffer the consequences. I'm sitting by the open living room window in one of my two outdoor plastic mesh chairs, enjoying the light breeze and the clean scent of the eucalytpus tree just outside. If any of my neighbors is looking in at me, I hope I look like a world-famous author, penning her next success, rather than someone with sunburnt knees who doesn't want to go even to the grocery store until sunset.

I feel vaguely dangerous, like a vampire :)