Enough. I practiced for two hours, my fingers hurt. So I’m playing around with the colours on my template now. “View Source” is my best friend when I find a site I like; I discover terrific colours that way, like the sage green I’m trying out here. After loading it to check it out, I have dubbed this colour scheme “Chocolate Mint”, which amuses me no end. Feedback is welcome. We’ll see how long it lasts. This page is always a work in progress.

Dinner was lovely, and so welcome – I was more than ready to escape the workplace. MLG and I spent a lot of time people-watching through our window at Hurley’s, as it’s Grand Prix weekend and there are many, many Beautiful People wandering about our fair city. (Beautiful People are those persons who sail down the street inviting you to look at them. They know that they’re on display, and they’ve dressed to make A Statement. Some of the statements were laughable, such as the woman we passed wearing a pink sequinned butterfly tied onto on her torso, with a pair of jeans. I giggled for half a block.) We talked of cabbages, kings, invasionary forces, having babies, and politics. Dinner with MLG exercises the mind and relaxes me at the same time.

In the pub I ran into an old customer from the F/SF shop who I still keep in touch with, and we mourned the loss of the shop again. Two years. It’s been two years (minus three weeks) short of two years since the doors closed due to poor sales, a direct result of the big box stores opening up five minutes down the road. The concept of time becomes so surreal as you get older. When you’re a kid, summer lasts forever. When you’re an adult, it’s more like, “Summer? When? What – wait, was that it? I must have blinked, because it’s October all of a sudden.” It seems like only yesterday that we put the new calendar up at work. (Actually, it seems like only yesterday that we turned the calendar page to February 2001. That’s how wonky time has become.)

I read another book when you weren’t looking: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King. Delicious. A Holmes story after his retirement, when he meets a young lady whose mind is as sharp as his, and he informally apprentices her. Good enough to keep an eye out for the rest of the series. Wonderful summer reading.