Of course, Ken and Dennis worked late on the shelves (and Mom came over and we all had pizza), so we didn’t take the car in last night. We got up early this morning (grudgingly—I don’t know why I’m not sleeping well still…) and did so. Then we went and saw our financial guy (what do you call a guy who gets you your insurance and also handles your, ack, financial portfolio? Because we have a financial portfolio. Which is exciting and scary in equal measures.) and that took forever. Necessary stuff, but looooong. Then we went to Carrow’s for lunch (cobb salads), and to Fry’s for computer bits. I finally realised that I hate Fry’s. Even when it’s not crowded, the salespeople are hard to find and when you do find them, they rush through helping you. And Fry’s _never_ has everything in stock that we’re looking for. We wanted the $65 memory. But noooo, all they have is the $125 memory. You look at their computer screen, and it’s all zeros in terms of what’s in stock. Why do we go there? Not anymore.

Anyway. We stopped to order minor parts for the car, then finally came home, whereupon I wilted under the onslaught of e-mail and we made lots of phone calls. And I made all the edits to the GP, because Cat was wonderful and proofed it last night before she passed out in exhaustion.

The rest of the evening is already becoming a blur. Ken went to Mom’s to get the key to Dennis’ car so we can use it to take Eostre to the vet in the morning for her EKG (because my car is being held overnight for observation). He also dropped the GP off at the copy shop for me. I copy edited, although I didn’t get nearly enough done. I made dinner, but therein lies a tale. We came back from Winter Weekend with an obscene amount of food (it helps to work final clean-up duty in the kitchen). We’re talking two huge unopened wedges of brie (mmmmmm!), among other things. Anyway, we came home with a bunch of boneless chicken breasts cooked in garlic. I divided them up and froze them in bags of two, and I’d recently defrosted a bag. I heated the chicken up with a jar of marinated artichoke hearts. Oh, _yum_.

Now I’m awfully tired, probably because I haven’t been sleeping well. (Some tossing and turning, and just overall not good deep or REM sleep.) We’ll watch tonight’s “Angel” and probably crash early. I hate being so behind on everything—e-mail, critiques, editing—but I suppose I’ll catch up next week in between being maudlin that Ken’s gone. :-)

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Updates From Yesterday:

I did look up info about drying meat. It may be inevitable. “But it’s like cooking,” Ken said. “No, it’s more like herbal stuff,” I said. In my mind it is, at least.

I nearly fell off the sofa when VH-1 Classics played “Heavy Metal Poisoning”, which is more rare than “Don’t Let It End”. Plus, I’d never seen the very very beginning of it. Cat laughed at me, then said if I hit record on the DVR, it would record back a few minutes, so now I can dub the whole damn thing to tape for all posterity.

We watched “Tru Calling” last night (still catching up on those), and before that, the latest “Charmed” because Dennis had missed it and I hadn’t seen it yet.

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The other day, my dad slipped on ice on the front porch of my parents’ condo in Myrtle Beach (where there hasn’t been ice in the 10 years they’ve been going down there for the winter). He has two broken ribs and a badly bruised left shoulder. He could have broken his back or cracked his head open, so we’re feeling lucky overall—but remember, this is the man who’s turning 75 next month. I’m still horrified at what happened.

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A very, very, _very_ disturbing “Angel” tonight. When they did all the viewer warnings on that one episode, I didn’t think it was all that bad. This one _should_ have had the warnings, and didn’t. Plus, like the “Buffy” where Zander lost his eye, this ep started out really funny.

Normally we watch “Angel” in the dark. I had to pause the DVR at a commercial, get up, walk around, get a glass of wine, and leave a light on to watch the rest.

They packed a lot into the episode—set up some interesting ideas and had a major character go through some emotional changes—and overall it was a good episode. But the disturbing part was really disturbing, and yet it was fixed too easily in the end. (I hope this isn’t giving away a plot point, but I think Zander should make a visit to Wolfram & Hart.)

[still shuddering]