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Reading: The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander.
Seeing: The Mummy Returns, apparently along with everyone else in the country, as I just heard that it broke the record held by The Phantom Menace for the largest non-holiday opening weekend gross. A little short on storyline, unlike the first one, but still fine summer fun. Watching: The X-Files, but I'm not going to bitch about it this time. They brought in a new agent, just for this episode, and just so they could name her after a prominent Files fanfic writer who passed away in February from melanoma at the age of 29. What a wonderful way to acknowledge her. Appreciating: The variety in this quarter's Diarist.net award nominees. Nice to see so many new names. And speaking of meta things... Announcing: My intention to attend this year's JournalCon in Chicago, and I hope everyone else goes too. There are so many journalers out there I'm just dying to meet.
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I've always held a certain romantic notion about train travel. I don't know why that developed, or when. Ever since I read Murder on the Orient Express, I guess. Which is not romantic at all. But whatever. I'm watching a show about the Eastern & Oriental Express, a train that travels between Bangkok and Singapore once a week, and is reportedly one of the most luxurious trains in the world. It's an interesting show, not only about the train itself, but also the route it takes, which includes the notorious bridge over the River Kwai. I don't know why I continue to be enamored of trains. I've been on one exactly three times: going from Harrisburg to Philadelphia one morning, going back to Harrisburg that evening, and one overnight trip from Leningrad to Moscow when I was a senior in high school. That was an interesting trip. Mostly because the bathrooms locked every time the train stopped, supposedly so no one would be in them when it jerked to a start again, but the only time anyone needed the bathroom was when the train stopped because that was when everyone woke up. So we made a lot of friends, standing outside the bathroom in our pajamas, waiting for the train to start again. But I still like the idea of it. The constant movement, the endless countryside, the feeling that one has stepped back in time. The proximity to others that practically forces you to get to know new people. I plan to take many trains on my great France Excursion of 2002.
 I'm taking the day off today, just because. Because, basically, I've worked my ass off the last two weeks and New York is gone and no one cares where I am for the time being. Actually, all weekend, I was thinking that I would probably go ahead and go in, because I do have some New York clean-up to do, and it would make me feel all virtuous since I had told everyone I was taking the day off, so showing up would make people think I'm really dedicated. But whatever. Just when I was sitting here lamenting the fact that I didn't have anything interesting to write about, I went to the store. Now. The screen door to my balcony has been broken since last fall, and because I am who I am, I never bothered calling to get it fixed. I have long since been satisfied that the cat isn't going to do anything crazy out there, so on days like today when it isn't hot enough to turn the air conditioning on, I pull the sliding glass door open and forget about it. Which is exactly what I did today. And then I went to the store. And then I came home. And there was a bird flying in circles around my living room, occasionally stopping to rest on the frame of my poster of Le Monde Des Chimeres or the halogen lamp or the scales my father gave me for graduation or even the top of the blinds over the sliding glass doors, a mere six inches from freedom. There are days when I am eternally grateful that I live in an apartment complex with maintenance men. This is one of those days. I make the call, and within five minutes there are four such men standing in my living room. One of them has a towel, another has a big net made out of chain mail. For another five minutes the guy with the basket thing swipes at the bird, who is now too scared to land. He finally knocks it to the ground where it flutters around but does not appear to be harmed. He picks it up and tosses it out the door. And then two of them hang around to fix the screen door while I inspect my living room for any evidence of birdshit, and amazingly, I found none. As scared as that bird seemed to be, you would think he would have had that uncontrollable urge, but my belongings escaped unscathed. The cat, by the way, apparently hid under the bed the entire time. Not that she could have done anything about it anyway, but it would have been fun seeing her act like a real cat and try to chase it. But no, she's one big chicken, disguised as a cat.
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