I just had a long conversation with alanro and a brief but cheerful one with shikzoid [she answered the phone, then handed me off to him]. Alan and I do much better by phone or in person than by email or IM, and I was overdue for this. Life happened--they were out of town, or I was, or it got late and I was doing other things; when we'd talked in December we planned on January, based on when I knew I, and then they, would be traveling.

Alan seems basically cheerful about work, and on a shorter scale about a barbecued salmon he is now eating for dinner. Shikzoid was also in a good mood, but remarked on having trouble keeping track of time (in the sense of how long it's been since something happened, the specific being whether I'd visited since they got a particular cat), which is something I sympathize with.