It's probably past time for me to do one of those '2003 in review' entries, or maybe just answer one of those end of year surveys that's going around, but, hey, I'm still catching up on the past week.

What I should really be doing right now is catching up on laundry. Why do I have so many clothes? How did they all get dirty at once? I've even thrown out numerous hopelessly ratty pairs of jeans and T-shirts in an attempt to reduce the size of the pile. But Melvin is still large...

(I'm indebted to Marissa for telling me the name of the laundry monster. He's a little less formidable now that he has a name. A little less.

But, at any rate, here's what I've been doing for the past few days when I should have been doing laundry...

Monday and Tuesday were not particularly eventful. I think Daniel may have done a load of laundry. We did some miscellaneous cleaning and unpacking.

On Wednesday, I went to work in the morning, and then Daniel picked me up and we went over to Atherton to have lunch with Daniel's grandparents, Doris and Chauncey (who live there), and Daniel's parents, Ross and Susan (who were in town for a few days). Chauncey and I had a grand discussion of how to introduce change in large corporations (loosely inspired by my observation that there were probably some ways to better ensure that the tech writers at my company got all the information that needed to be in the manual.) My favorite insight was this one: People in a company who have nothing to do will always embrace change, because they have nothing to do. The people who are working hard to make the current crummy system work will tend to resist change, even if it will make things better in the long run, because making the current crummy system work takes up all their time. So you have to seduce them into making the change, by making sure that there's something in it for them.

It's not quite a universal truth-I think that people, by nature of their personalities, differ in how fond they are of innovation and change in their jobs. But I think that it explains a lot about resistance to change in large organizations.

That Chauncey, he's pretty sharp for 91 year-old.

After lunch, I went with Daniel's sister, Diana, and Susan, to shop for a wedding dress for Diana, who's getting married in September. Wedding dress shopping was easier for me. The way I remember it, there were four dresses in the store we went to that looked even remotely plausible at first glance. I tried them on, and three looked 'eh' and one looked smashing. Decision made. I guess this was a bigger store, because there were many dresses that looked plausible on the rack, and just okay on Diana. (It didn't help that Diana is about a size 2, and the dresses available to try on were generally in sizes 6-8. You try looking bridal while in a dress six sizes too big. I dare ya.)

But we found a dress. Yay! One more thing that Diana can scratch off the to-do list.

Then Diana and Susan came over to see our new apartment, and they agreed that it was a terrific apartment.

Daniel and I had a low key New Year's Eve together. I think I went to bed before midnight.

On New Year's Day, we slept in late, had lunch, and went over to Borders. I was hoping to find a copy of the February F&SF, which has a story by my Clarion West classmate Y.S. Wilce in it, but they only had the January issue on the shelves. Curses. But we got books. Daniel raided the military history section (an ongoing interest of his), and I picked up a remaindered cookbook, and Looking for Spinoza and The Feeling of What Happens by neurologist/psychologist Antionio Damasio. The first is a rather delightful musing on Damasio's research into the biological origins of feelings and its somewhat unexpected resonances with the work of Spinoza. The second is an earlier work of Damasio's which I put on my 'to read' list a while back, because I kept coming across it favorably cited in other works I was reading on congnitive science and the origins of consciousness.

Eventually, we plunked ourselves down in the Borders cafe with our purchases and a couple of large coffees. (New Year's Day being one of the few days in the year when the Borders cafe is not packed with studying students.) We read away the rest of the afternoon. A nice way to spend New Year's.

I guess that brings us reasonably up to date. Guess now I'll go start a load of laundry.