Wednesday, 22 December 2004

In the morning I was wearing a turtleneck shirt under a sweatshirt under my green sweater made from icelandic lopi yarn. And my fingerless gloves.

It's cold in our apartment.

It's a matter of insulation, I think: these apartments don't have any to speak of. Since the heat is included in the rent, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but when it's really cold outside, the heat can't quite keep up in the apartment.

We used to think that it was just a matter of the heat falling behind, so Jackie watches the weather forecast and turns the heat up preemptively when there's a forecast for below-zero temperatures. On Friday she cranked it up, and that day and Saturday it was quite warm inside, but it didn't seem to make any difference once the wind shifted around.

I don't know if it's warmed up any, but I've warmed up a bit. I'm not wearing the sweater. Still with the fingerless gloves, though.

The fingerless gloves were a Christmas present last year from Jackie. They're a purplish red with green around the wrists. We call them "rosebud wristlets." Jackie made a similar pair for Kelly Link, and we were able to give them to her last summer at WorldCon.

It's good to be home. I spent two weeks traveling on business, one week in Toulouse, France, and then another week in Aalborg, Denmark. I got to see a little of Toulouse, since I was there over a weekend, but essentially nothing of Denmark--it was dark when I went to the site and dark when I came back. (Actually, it was dark for an hour after I got to the site and got dark again about 4 hours before I headed back to the hotel. And it didn't get so very light in between. Aalborg is way up north.)

It was a lot of hard work and a lot of long hours, but I found that I didn't really mind. I felt like I was being productive.

Now, I'm on vacation. Monday and Tuesday I ended up going into the office to work on my expense report. (The tool for doing expense reports is going to be unavailable for the first two weeks of the new year, so I really wanted to get it done.) So, in some ways, today seemed like the first real day of vacation. Jackie and I had lunch out, went to the library and the bookstore and the video store, and played a bit of Animal Crossing. I spent some time crunching some numbers on the effects of some benefits changes that Motorola is considering.

This evening the plan is to watch "A Fistful of Dollars," and probably an Episode of Angel. (In Angel we're approaching the end of season 3. I particularly like the stuff with Wesley from those episodes, and the ones from early season 4.)

Tomorrow, my plan is to get down to work writing. If I manage it, I'll be updating my journal here regularly.

I didn't manage to get an entry written until today, but Happy Solstice anyway!