(no subject)

[prog]

Finally got a couple of books mailed out. Lots more to go, but it's good to get a start. (I still haven't opened one of the boxes, and find myself hoping that it actually does contain the MOSXiaNs I assume, and not 10 preview copies of another title, or something.)

Also emailed a pen-pal with whom I hadn't corresponded in a couple of years. The last time she wrote, she had just enlisted in the U.S. Navy. This was about six months before 9/11. Since then, I would think of her every so often, usually triggered by a news report regarding the nation's shifting military stance: Say, now, I know someone in the military, uh... But then something, the Book or something like it, would interpose itself in my mental view-tunnel before I could act on the heartbreakingly obvious follow-through of dropping her a line. I feel very bad about this, and expressed as much in my letter, trying not to sound too sappy. I hope I can rekindle this friendship, though I'll understand if she doesn't have a lot of time for letter-writing these days.

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I wonder if the Navy is the nerdiest branch of the U.S. armed forces. I seem to know several geek-ethnic people with Navy service records.

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Read a short story last night whose central plot element involved evil aliens modifying the sun so that it aged at a supernatural rate, and would go red giant, swallowing up the earth, in less than a half-century. I found this concept so uniquely horrifying/fascinating that it was all I dreamed about that night, over and over, and felt sweet relief when I woke up out of that terrible dreamscape. Twice: the first time I woke up, I quickly fell asleep again, so that I dreamed that my dream-self had woken up from a dream he was having, only to find himself still in the nightmare. Pretty intense.