Uh-oh

Neil Gaiman says, "And now I am off on my travels for the next eleven days or thereabouts. For the next two days I'm working with Penn Jillette on a Secret Project."

(Hmm. Wonder if they met through B5?)

Constantine and cookies

Yesterday afternoon Kendra and I attended a "seminar" on Constantine, part of the AAH conference UMich is hosting this weekend—with "seminar" in quotes because it was actually a cross between a panel discussion and an advertising session for the panelists' upcoming book. I harvested some useful fodder for The Slow Palace, to wit: the perception of Constantine by the southern Romans as a barbarian conqueror from the north; the gradual disappearance of animal sacrifice in the cities due to increased cost and the conflicts they generated, rather than their sudden elimination by Constantine's pen; an overview of the theories surrounding the deaths of Fausta (his wife) and Crispus (his son); the framing of Constantine's attitude toward Christianity as "There's one God, and He wants me to rule. That's settled; why are you debating these insignificant things?" Probably most useful, though, was learning that there are still a lot of unanswered questions, which frees me up considerably; I don't need to worry that I'm going to make the wrong choice. The book isn't due out for a year or two, but it sounds like it could be quite useful to me if I'm still in the process of writing TSP. (Heh.)

Thence to Trader Joe's—I got their frozen tuna patties, which I shall report on later, and oatmeal cranberry dunkers, which are excellent. When dunked in milk, they taste quite a bit like granola cookies.

I had a midnight show at work last night (The Princess Bride), but even so it was a relatively painless shift. Bill and Brendon are fun to work with; most of the students are gone, so we weren't terribly busy; I had the distraction of SWILfolk in IRC to keep me from getting bored. We got out at 2AM.

Then, despite thinking I might be too tired, I had an excellent two-hour conversation with Our Friend In Hawaii. I think I'm about 98% convinced, now, that things are going to be just fine between us. We talked about Boyfriend without any much discernable stress, we laughed a lot, we discussed vague plans for seeing each other. It is unfortunately true that a 2,000-mile gap is sufficient in itself to generate sadness and longing, but the longing of distance is ever so much easier to deal with than the hooks of jealousy. She suggested that I become a two-week participant in her program on Maui, which would both give us a chance to spend a lot of time together and enable me to see charismatic megafauna (i.e., whales and manta rays), but it costs $2,000, plus airfare; we'll see. Hopefully there will be an earlier, mainland opportunity this summer.

Shadows and afterimages

Thunderstorms have been rolling across Ann Arbor all night. I've opened my window, risking a damp bed, to let the sounds in; is there anything so soothing as rain? The roof of the shed in our neighbors' yard is reflective and angled at 45°, so whenever there is lightning overhead it's like a flash bulb's explosion of light bursting into my bedroom.