Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

One of the random things we found when unpacking the office/study was a small pouch with a pair of earrings. I hadn't worn earrings in months, and put these in mostly to check whether I could.

There are also two small backpacks that I had completely forgotten about. They're small enough that it will be hard for me to overload them, and I don't remember why I stopped using them. One, I thought I set aside because the zipper was broken -- it's not -- and the other I had forgotten about entirely.

Some of the things that I had been keeping on my desk back in Belmont are in some other box or boxes, and a lot still needs rearranging. But this is starting to feel more like we live here, present tense, and less like we're still in flux.

We have sorted all our hardcovers alphabetically, except for some of the oversized books (which need to sit on separate shelves)!

It took a while, and the first stages felt very slow; by the end, I felt as though I was zooming through the last few letters, because we had already done most of the work. (We sorted each bookcase alphabetically by author first, then started on the process of getting all the A's on the top of the first bookcase, and so on; somewhere along the way, I started filling from both ends, with Zelazny, Yolen, and some of the W's on the last bookcase.

This feels like a significant accomplishment, in part because we'd given up on alphabetizing the books in the old apartment. The key difference is that we did some culling as we unpacked, and bought two more bookcases; having enough room means that we weren't looking at the train-wreck of "here are the neatly alphabetized authors through about R, good luck with the piles if you want anything from the rest of the alphabet."

The paperbacks are a project for another week, or month, but I feel greatly accomplished, and there's some practical value in being able to find a significant number of our books. We also turned up a few duplicates in the literally the same edition direction: e.g., we own exactly one Ron Goulart collection, but had two copies of it. And two copies of the same edition of Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee.

As a side note, having had the energy to do most of this suggests to me that I am basically recovered from being sick for most of February and the beginning of March. (cattitude started the bookcase-by-bookcase sort while I was out of town. I did the rest of those and then started combining the bookcases; I assumed he'd join in, but I finished before he had the chance.)

I should make some plans to see people, now that I don't expect to have to cancel for health reasons.

cattitude and I have been exploring the area around our new home, slowly, sometimes just wandering and sometimes as part of running errands. For example, on the bus to work he noticed a large Asian/international grocery; it's inconvenient for walking, but a fairly easy bus ride. On my way back from the Department of Licensing (for my state ID card) last week, I stopped in there, and got spices and some other useful things. Yesterday we went to the Pike Place Market in search of cheese, which we found, along with some early peas.

Today I went for a local walk, partly in search of a bakery I'd found listed on Yelp, Belle Pastry. I brought home a raspberry napoleon, which was tasty, on the custard end of the custard—whipped cream spectrum, and with properly flaky pastry. It's on a bit of Main Street that seems to be doing the "renovate the older shops/slightly fancy shopping" thing, and I also saw two chocolatiers, a selection of restaurants, and a Title Nine shop. I think it's time to go buy some new sports bras. Also, one of the restaurants looked promising in a not at all fancy way: there's a neon sign saying "Matzo Ball Soup." Unfortunately, I'd already had lunch.