palace of winds

“Singing in the voice of a tired traveler, alone against everything. A new testament. There was no certainty to the song anymore, the singer could only be one voice against all the mountains of power. That was the only sureness. The one voice was the single unspoiled thing. A song of snail light.”

Well, I’ve been sitting on this layout for a while because a) I couldn’t get everything arranged the way I wanted and b) I couldn’t get Firefox and IE to get along. Now I’ve both settled for this arrangement and given up on working with Firefox, since it’s hopelessly incompatible with IE, and more people I know use IE.

Well, and I use IE, and I’m pretty sure I look at this site five hundred times more than everyone else put together, so. And there are still choices for people who use Firefox. I’ll continue to attempt to get the code to work in both places, but I’m not going to kill myself over it.

…and Christmas in July. That first, I suppose.

It’s been a really good month for us all around. My brother-in-law is an official deputy now. I’m an official sales assistant, and today I got the books (the thick - dear god very thick - books) to study for my securities tests. Last week (exactly) Mel and Travis closed on their first home, which is beautiful beautiful. Moving sucked big time, but I’m mostly healed from it now, and I’m very excited for them.

The July in Christmas:

I’m going to snowbird it for a couple weeks just after Christmas, news of which is also part of the astoundingly good July I’ve been having. I heart Abe. :D And my new job, where even though I’m taking ten days off next month (road triiiip!) they let me have another nine (eight if we get the third off) in Dec/Jan.

The construction was not so nice this morning, since it was a lot of sawing or jackhammering or something else extremely noisy. Probably lots of different noisy things. Very distracting.

The morning was slow and the afternoon was hectic, starting around lunchtime, and all the noise and the Mondayness made me scattered. Usually I’m focused; I like to get one thing done before I start the next, so I don’t forget about the thing I was doing. But today I flitted from one task to the next like [insert clever metaphor about a) a fruitfly in a crackhouse or b) that blind bat in that one 80’s rainforest cartoon]. Office Depot brought my delivery (I call it mine because I ordered it and I am in charge of it and it had pretty things for me) and I unpacked about a quarter of it before wandering to the bank to deposit my newest biggest-check-ever-seen (not for me, alas, alas). When I came back I put together various reports and forms and emailed random people (okay, not really — they were rather specific people and it was for rather specific purposes, but the timing was willy-nilly) while unpacking the rest of the boxes.

I now have — lots of things, actually, but most importantly: three wooden inbox trays, my own roller of correction tape (I am convinced it comes directly from the Hand of God. This stuff is completely amazing. I could just sit and use it all day long), and a shiveringly expensive stapler.

I also have: a problem with long, rambling entries that have no real point.

And a blank fingerprint card. I need to find someone to print me for the FBI.

No, really.

So, starting tomorrow I’m even more employed than I was. Forever and ever amen employed. (Well, not really, but you know what I mean. Bonus-getting healthcare-having employed.)

That and they’re putting in another office suite below ours, so when I come in there’s all of this beautiful morning light glinting in off the lake through the floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall windows and in that warm glow are white t-shirted workmen. Lately they have been painting with ridiculously-long-handled rollers, which does lovely strong things to their shoulders and backs.

Went out shopping again today, for the sale at Ulta. Then we stopped by my grandma’s to put some fertilizer in her plant and start an experiment with cutting it back. It’s enormous and she’s had it forever, so we really don’t want to kill it. I cut my own plant back, but it’s a totally different kind (and much heartier, I expect; cuttings from mine have lasted for weeks in the mail). Anyway, after we’d finished we walked her downstairs for dinner, where a small group of little old ladies had already congregated outside of the dining room, and where the following bizarre exchange occurred:

“This is my granddaughter Rachel.”
“Oh, I was just looking at her legs. She’s got really nice legs. Nice arms too, but the legs are what you’ll look at first.”

So thank you, woman whose name I’ve forgotten. It’s one of the nicest things anyone’s said to me in a while.