Much ~ma to your sister, Aimee.

(and I totally LOVE that you get such nerdy joy from the library, BTW).

I'd forgotten how much I love roaming the stacks of a university library. That old book smell! And while UW can't be said to have an extensive military history collection, they do have books on Wellington and Napoleon that the Seattle library doesn't--and I can keep them for 12 weeks and renew them, instead of three weeks with no renewal like interlibrary loan.

I got the following email from Ex-Army Brother this evening (Brenda is our aunt who sent the previous email):

I just had a nice phone talk with Mother, and she said that Brenda always makes things sound worse than they are. She understands her situaton, but seems very much at peace with it. She said that the doctor has had very good results with this particular chemo drug, but was very clear that it will at best slow the cancer, so she will have to take it for the rest of her life, or until she is too sick to want any more of it. She had chemo yesterday, and still feels good today, so is hopeful that it will not make her sick. She is looking forward to her trip out here, and we are very much looking forward to seeing her.

Humbug. Landlord sent his yearly note raising my rent. Bah. Can I just ignore it? He sent it regular post. Even with the raise in rent, it's still below market rate. Bah. I hate it still.

The plastic spoons were soup spoons, which meant that you could only eat about half the custard before the cup got smaller than the spoon. I don't know if this was poor planning or a sociological experiment.

Pah - that's easy! You use the handle to eat with!

See, now I would have been in the non-too-using band of chimps and sticking my tongue in the glass.

psst: tell us in whitefont

Tell us in code!

6765 21 5 1 610 4181 4181 5 4181 17711 0 2 0 6765 34 610 377 34 377 17711 610 144 17711 5 4181 0 55 610 1 34 377 6765 5 2584 17711 34 5 28657 Yikes, I hope there wasn't any typos. Would make deciphering a lot harder. Now it's super seekrit, so please don't post the deciphered phrase. k?

mm - insent. A little while ago.

Aimee, you and your sister are in my thoughts today.

Sending out the ~ma for Aimee's sister, now.

This is the dress I bought last night.

Dear Freshman Comp Student,

It is completely ineffective to e-mail me and ask me to look at your paper when you send me the exact same version we worked on in our tutoring session.

For future reference, if you make changes, you may want to save them so I can see them and comment on them. If you have me comment on the old version, I'm probably just going to tell you the same things I told you when we met.

Thanks!

-Valerie

Susan, I'm so sorry.

Bleary-eyed and MADE of gronk. With Aims and Em out of the house I couldn't sleep very well. And I'm fighting a cold or something. So I tossed and turned all night and would drift off, then wake up in a mild panic, all disoriented and junk. Then I'd cough up a lung and drift off again...

Glargh with a side of gurmple.

Oh, and Aims...if you're on today...you left your cell phone at home.