26th April 2000

I've been neglecting my best friend lately, forgetting to reply to his mails and all... I'm so sorry Kenneth forgive me please... I can only claim abject laziness ;)

Today was another uneventful day just the way I need them. I woke up and raged at the sky because it seems determined to be grey and wet throughout my holidays, and I know it'll just melt away once they hols end. Anyway I stayed home and moped till 3pm when the sky cleared. At the time I was on IRC and I somehow became embroiled in a heated argument with someone whom I didn't really realise I was arguing with; to my mind I was just answering a question, but perhaps I was insensitive, and I ended up hurting his feelings. Initially while he was ranting at me I felt like just getting up and leaving suddenly, without notice since I felt so old and tired and that it was all so pointless trying to salve a wounded ego that would not hear me out. By then I'd become the egoistical villain who had shown him up in public (!) just to show I was cleverer than him. But tempted as I was I tried reason and said I *felt* like leaving but I wouldn't because I knew to leave like that would be to hurt him more. After a while I realised it wasn't working and thought it best to leave before he angered himself further, or before some of it began to spread to me. So I literally got up and hurled out of the house to the park, and ate lunch there in the sunlight. Pizza pie in the sky with bluebells at my feet and a nice hot cup of tea. It was beautiful, and I read more about the owl wars. The Lost Domain isn't a children's story book at all, it details the protaganist, a young tawny owl, in his journeys through life and love, and has some graphic descriptions of him putting out the eyes of other birds. But it's still a good, clean book with no perversion in it. It's written simply and honestly, and I'm completely caught up in it. I think I'm an escapist really. I love to read science fiction and fantasy. I can understand why some people like to read current affairs and politics in their spare time, I can understand the yearning to know about the world around you in which you live, but to me, I've heard enough about the world about me and I'd rather just spend my precious moments of leisure alone in my head, with a book written about another world with less darkness than the one we walk in our waking hours.

Naturally while I was reading the sky clouded over and I looked up and saw (I Swear) a huge cloud, just one, hovering over me and obliterating the sun. So I got up and went and bought a blender, and then grocery shopped in the chill wind, and as I rounded the corner to my home the sun came up again and I felt warmth on my skin and I harumphed. But well, I don't care. I got all my shopping done and now I can make fruit smoothiessssssss thanks to Serling for putting the idea in my head, and I'll be a richer person for the experience.

The first season of Friends is back on, and Jennifer Aniston looks well fed and happy again. And she reminds me of someone else I once knew with a sparkle in the eye and body language that stated simply, I'm alive, I'm thinking, I'm funny. In the later seasons I came to love Courteney Cox, and Jennifer Aniston began to look ordinary as the magic faded from her eyes. But Courteney, despite aging, still has it. :)