Meanderings: December 16, 1999

Thursday,
December 16, 1999

It's snowing again, and this time I think it's gonna stick. Despite all my previous complaints, I don't actually mind snow qua snow -- it's slipping on the stuff I hate. Admittedly, though, even I get caught up in a snowy night, when the overcast sky glows with reflected light and all you can hear is the hiss of snow as it falls. We live halfway up a hill -- across the street, a couple of other houses march up to the top of the hill. In this light, you can just see outlines of the houses blurring into the trees, with the occasional bright Christmas candelabra or star shining in a window. Makes the duckwalking worth it.

More prosaically, however, it'll make getting up the hill to Mörby Centrum tomorrow morning an interesting trip. I need to visit the Vårdcentral and get a new Levoxin scrip -- I ran out last week and man, I can tell when I haven't been taking it. It feels like I have this tiny, steady pump of melatonin going all the time, just making me want to curl into a ball and sleep. And snow doesn't help.

Wake me up when it's spring -- Momma Bear's gonna hibernate. Talk about the World's Easiest Diet -- sleep for three months and lose thirty pounds.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- stick with the aerobics, Melanie.

The Web is a grand thing. I've been surfing for research for WHITE KNIGHT, QUEEN ALICE -- the second half of the book will be set in High Wycombe, a city about halfway between London and Oxford, and the people who run the council website have been extraordinarily helpful with details about likely places where Julia and David would live, what kind of houses would be available, where the good and bad bits are, population and distance from London, etc. I need to get as much background information now while I'm writing it -- I can always correct or edit bits when I actually go there in February after my Javascript course in London.

Some neat stuff has turned up -- apparently High Wycombe is now a bedroom community for techies, so Julia and David will fit right in. Also, two of the Spice Girls live in the area -- I probably won't do it because it would date the book terribly, but I'd love to have Alice bump into one of them at a store or something and just listen in on the conversation. "Oh, my gracious -- no wonder you can't enunciate 'Wannabe' correctly, with that object in your tongue. I take it the physicians couldn't remove it after the accident? Oh -- you weren't in an accident. . .oh. . .you had it pierced deliberately. . .oh. Er. . .may I ask why?"

But no, I shall resist and be a good little author. Thou shalt not date thy Book, lest ye bore thy future audience and deprive thyself of sales. Would've been fun, though. . .

TOP