A lesson learned tonight: when there is a cat that really wants to sit in your lap do not take your eyes off of it. Do not stop watching the cat ready to pounce to rub your eyes because they itch so much because why did you thing it made sense to go hang out at a cat house in the middle of ragweed season. Just don't do it. And rubbing your eyes never makes anything actually better. _

Sometimes, I need to be reminded that movies were bad, and that I'm not just makig them worse in my head. Like the Star Wars prequels, and Troy. _

I have just looked at the page count on the book for the former Pulitzer Prize book group. It is 530 pages. I don't have it yet. ((sigh))

I hope it's good. _

Sam has been with my mom so long and she has rescheduled bring him back to me so many times I am getting a little paranoid that something has happened to him and she is lying to me.

She assures me that no, he's fine, he's happy running around in Vermont, tearing the screaming parts out of Flying Screaming Woot Monkeys, and that she'll bring him back to me on Thursday, with his bangs freshly trimmed.

We shall see. _

Reading through the daily email digest from my high school, I am thinking, "If you have to give specific directions on how to get from the highway to the school because most of the normal roads are flooded, close the school."

Also, have people looked at the pictures from Central PA? Because it's crazy. There's a picture of a flooded strip mall where the water comes up to the roof of a Pizza Hut. And if you look at pictures of the (pathetic) amusement park in Lancaster, it will make you wonder "why did they build an amusement park in a river?" _

Oh. Hi allergies. I was wondering where you'd gone, and now that you've come back, even if not in full course, I wonder why I was missing you. _

 I didn't know I was going to have to start avoiding social media things if I wanted to avoid 9/11 nostalgia this early. _

 So, normally, come fall, my allergies go crazy. I can't leave the house without an inhaler, my eyes itch and burn, blah blah, etc etc. I take allergy pills everyday and that makes it all almost manageable. But this year, nothing. My head has felt foggy for a week, but this isn't my normal sinus headache, just fog. I'm not really going to argue with this sudden disappearance of allergies, but...is this something I should worry about? If I didn't have a roommate who's having crazy allergic reactions, I would just figure that the ragweed wasn't pollinating yet. But...Right. So. Should I just feel vaguely happy that I'm not having the allergies of death that I usually have and have done with it? _

So, I was sitting there this afternoon, struggling to figure out VLookUps to do a favor for a coworker. I'm sitting there reading quietly aloud to myself, with my hands over my hears so I can concentrate over the girl two cubes away who is on the phone. (She has every right to be on the phone. It is just distracting.) The girl I was looking up how to do complicated Excel things for comes up to me and says "Can I ask you to do me a favor?"

Me, looking up, glowering slightly, "Is it going to be as hard as the favor you asked me for yesterday?"

She, laughing (she's one of the admins, and she's pretty chill generally, I wouldn't have said this to anyone else, "No, no, I'm just trying to log onto the database from the computer in the conference room and it's asking me which server I want."

This is an easy problem. It's something I thought I had dealt with on all the computers in the office already, including the one in the conference room, but things are tricky in the conference room, so we laughed together, I helped her point the database software to the right server and the Live database, and went back to trying to find instructions in plain English and not tech speak.

I did find them, eventually, and I cheered. _

 Sometimes, the bitchy comments come out. I just emailed my mom:

I am inclined to think that other people's birthdays aren't really the best time to introduce anyone to the boyfriend you broke up a family for.

When she asked if I thought she should bring her new boyfriend to her mom's mostly surprise 85th birthday party. _

My mother is absolutely oblivious enough to not realize that, hey, maybe birthday dinner is not the best time to introduce me to her new boyfriend.

Despite having no plans (I am bad at plans. I am especially bad at birthday plans after a series of birthdays that just felt generally unhappy when I was a teenager culminating in my mom not calling me on my birthday freshman year of college), I hemmed and hawed out of that dinner. Basically, I said "I'm not up for meeting B-- on my birthday. Also, I would like it if Sam could come to me on a Friday, so he isn't left home alone and miserable when I go to work the first day." I feel kind of bitchy. But also, come on, really? _

They haven't replaced the billboard, and there is currently an empty frame, staring out at a large hotel. (I think it is a hotel.) I like it better than a billboard. I wish it would stay like this, but I now suspect this of being hurricane prep. _

I am watching people change the billboard outside my office window. This is always fascinating. I hope I don't wind up with something ridiculous, like the months Jim Carrey advertising Mr. Popper's Penguins (did anyone see it? I was kind of offended at the idea of it, it was one of my favorite books in elementary school). Or something despicable, like the Svedka robot. (I hate the Svedka robot. I refuse to buy Svedka on the grounds that I detest that ad campaign. Also I generally buy vodka. But if I did! I wouldn't buy that one, even if they do make the best gin.) _

Surrounded fragile things with yarn from the giant bag of "what to do with this yarn?" bag. (Also, bubble wrap and newspaper in between.) I feel quite pleased with myself for not throwing it away, or giving it away on Freecycle. _

Sort of impulsively, I am reading a novel about Madam Tussaud and the French Revolution. There was, at some point on the Stuff You Missed in History podcast (sometime in 2011, I think, but whether it was recent or not, I don't know), an episode about her, and I thought she sounded interesting. And there was this new book. So I got it out of the library. The author also wrote novels about Nefertiti and Cleopatra's Daughter (because there are things that will get me to read books, I also have the book about Cleopatra's daughter out of the library, but it wasn't a 7 day loan, so it is coming next). One of my coworkers walking by saw the Madam Tussaud novel on my desk, it is heavy and had fallen out of my purse, and she was so excited, "Oh, you have to tell me about it, I loved her other books." Me: "Sure. I haven't read the others." Her: "Read Cleopatra's Daughter first. The story works better." I said something like, "but isn't there at least 1000 years between Cleopatra and Nefertiti? The stories shouldn't be that related." Her: "They are closer than you would think."

Nope, I checked, there's ~1300 years in between Nefertiti and Cleopatra. Maybe it's a different Nefertiti. But the Egypt of Cleopatra would be pretty different than the Egypt of Nefertiti, and Egypt isn't even my area of ancient history, I only know smatterings, and what Herodotus wrote. But we'll see. Apparently Cleopatra's Daughter is all about her after Antony and Cleopatra lost, when she was living in Rome with Octavia. (I always liked Octavia.) _

I think my copy of Mollin and Williamson is mostly free of notes. It has doodles, but very little writing. I suspect I didn't actually do any homework for Freshman Greek.

Also, I just taped the cover back on and packed it in a box. I have sneered at this book for 12 years and I have moved it so many times it's pretty silly. I moved it to Philly, to DC, between several houses in Boston, and I even thought I wasn't going to move it this time, but I can't bring myself to throw it away. Even though I have a much better Greek textbook, from which I actually learned Greek. _

In the continuing adventures of my family falling to pieces, my stepdad has started badgering us to figure out what we want to do about Thanksgiving. I think he wants me to host, he keeps saying "Tori or Connor" but really that means "Tori" because I have things like a table and know how to cook. (Connor does know how to cook, but not Thanksgiving things.)

I am feeling burnt out and I don't feel up to doing another fractured family thing. And I want more fractured family things that involve my mom instead of him. I kind of just want to skip family Thanksgiving all together, but I don't think I can get away with that. _

I keep moving my childhood stuffed animals from house to house, in bags. I don't know what I want to do with them, really. I am too attached to them to throw them out, they are too ratty to give away, and I am too old for them. So, I guess I will just keep moving them, and storing them in closets and basements. _

Packing books by size: will make for an unorganized bookshelf on the other end (not that it was organized going in) but will probably require less boxes.

Brianne packed her books by genre, and put initials on the sides to let her know what was inside. She packed mine by genre, and we ignored authors. My step-grandfather, helping us load our moving truck said "who is Johnny, and why are his books so heavy?"

I hate packing. _

I am trying to purge my bookshelves of things that I know I will never read again. I am likely to sell to Powells whatever they will take, and I want to dump the rest in a book donation box. I know they have some at some T stops; does anyone remember where? _