I aten't dead.

I may from time to time feel as though I am, though.

The LA and I have been busy making the house better organised, and also, this weekend, we went to the LA's ten-year college reunion. This allowed me to meet some of her friends from then (all of whom are interesting) and to see the rather nice campus. It also netted us a 20% discount in the campus bookstore (or, as the sign without would have it, the bookstope), which we used on accessories for her car, a coffee-table book on the college (which actually was not included, but came with a desk calendar and is very pretty anyway), and two books by their staff which appealed. Also on a copy of the Canterbury Tales in the original, since I dislike reading it in translation.

Unfortunately, I was suffering some nasty stomach upsets while there, and the weather caused my knees and ankles to point-blank refuse cooperation. We became regular clients of the students with golf carts ferrying the crocked oldies around.

To reassure those who may have been worried, I was not allowed to drive in LA traffic. Not least because we wanted to give Hertz their Corolla back in the same nice-ish shape we received it in. I did, however, drive us to and from Oakland airport, and found that my Volvo is set up responsively enough that it tries to follow largish cracks in the road. The solution would be to fix the road, of course, since largish cracks aren't a good thing at all, at all.

Other news since the last post includes a report that Ikea have (gasp!) changed the design of the Billy bookcase. Instead of the old system of a nut and bolt holding the fixed shelves, one now uses a long-headed screw and half-turn fastener to provide this security. The white ones now also come with a one-piece back, folded into three to fit the box. The silly finishing nails remain, though, so we used the staple gun instead.

And now, I'm going to go collapse into a familiar bed. Sometime tomorrow, I must call and schedule a massage; Southwest are great in many ways, but being wedged into an airline seat does my back no good at all, no matter what. This is even more true if the plane is full. I have never been more glad to be back in my driving seat; Volvo's mid-90s seats really were excellent.