the blue sword

I don't really feel much desire to write tonight; my right hand is feeling really stiff, and I think that it is developing some sort of weird arthritis or something from spending most of my waking life on a keyboard. Even though most of the important letters on a keyboard are on the left side, my right hand gets an added workout when I'm using the nubby little mouse thing on my thinkpad, and since I sat with it in several hours of meetings today, it's not happy. Sadness. It's like some poor little injured thing that just has to grit its teeth and carry on because it doesn't really have any other options.

Well, that's certainly melodramatic; but given that I'm very similar physically to my grandmother, and she has arthritis so badly at this point that her fingers are completely twisted and misshapen, I'm a little paranoid about my hands. But, I'm getting a chair massage at work tomorrow! And they typically massage the hands briefly during those as well, so maybe that will help.

Tonight, I had dinner with Renee at California Pizza Kitchen, which was very lovely. I'm jealous of other people's residents, to some extent, but the jealousy has faded a lot; I'm happy with the 'residents' that I have left, who have all turned into friends at this point, and it's nice that no one can wake me up at four in the morning because they're locked out, or disturb my thoughts by playing loud piano outside my room. Of course, my neighbors make up for the piano somewhat; they're loudly revving an engine right now (it's midnight), and I can't even slam a door in a passive-aggressive method of chastisement.

So, dinner with Renee, and then I started rereading Robin McKinley's 'The Blue Sword,' which is one of my favorite fantasy books from my childhood and still remains one of those books that I find myself rereading every few months or so. I've written about it before, although the last time I reread it was sometime before I deleted all of my pre-August posts, but I will spare my hand and my readers any further thoughts on the matter. Now, it's time for bed!