Peeking into the rock

I've been taking buproprion for several years now, off-label: it helps a wee bit with focus, forgetfullness, and stupid sleep habits, and now I'm accustomed to it and when I miss doses I have more trouble with those things, especially the stupid sleep habits.

When Ted died the health uinsurance people transferred me from the workers' account to the retirement account.  They've suddenly noticed that I'm taking an antidepressant and now they're bombarding me with cheerful brochures about how it's not all my fault, and I'm not alone, and it takes time to get better.  It's an annoying waste of paper, is what it is.  And worse, each brochure comes with an assignment they want me to do.  One was I was supposed to check off thoughts and feelings I might have and if I had more than a certain number of them I was supposed to call "a health professional."  And another was I was supposed to make a chart of good and bad things that have happened in my life and mark down in columns whether I thought that they happened because of me or because of people and events beyond my control.  And if I thought I was the reason for the bad things and other people and things were the cause of the good things, I was in trouble.

Well, that's enough complaining about the mail.

On other fronts: I got a letter from the state assemblyman's office (signed by a Local Radio Personality, Rachel Ann Goodman, who does stuff on KUSP, or used to, anyway, I don't know if she's one of the ones who kept their jobs after KUSP went all NPR-PRI all the time), and they've spoken to somebody at UCSC who's weighing in on our side too.  It's like: everybody gets it but the central HR office in Berkeley.  And I suspect maybe they get it too but they have to turn it down first so we'll give them the stuff they need to make it look right.  Maybe.  I hope so.

I went shopping for Prague today.  I succeeded in getting warm fuzzy boots, gloves, and ear muffs.  I already have several scarves.  No, the boots, gloves, earmuffs, and scarves do not especially match.  This is fine.  I got a phrasebook and three guidebooks (my excuse: it's a long, long flight).  I talked to the phone people but I talked to the wrong ones for getting my phone activated for international.  

I also bathed cat and dog and treated dog for fleas and a hotspot.  And mopped the kitchen and bathroom, though I really need to do it over again.  Upstairs is nearly cleared out, but shed is not all loaded.

I'm working harder on writing right now.

( spoilers for Prospect Road. Does it matter? Maybe, to somebody, somewhere down the line. )
Need to walk dog before going to help paint signs for a peace vigil.

So here's the reason I was asking people about the shape of dinner. At least one of the editions of The Joy of Cooking says something about "in California, where they do everything their own way, the salad comes first." Another old cookbook says "It's becoming more common for people everywhere to serve the salad first, as they do in California." And this Spanish cookbook I was reading said, "In Spain, as in California, the salad is served first."

I'm a California girl, and yeah, if there's going to be an order to the meal, I expect salad to come early (but I think soup trumps salad for first position, though since I have no dining room and an awkwardly-shaped kitchen with no room for a dining table, dinners here are always food laid out around the kitchen all at once and people fare the best they can). But I just thought it was weird that for a time anyway there was a perception that salad comes some other place in the meal than the front, except in California and Spain, where you expect things to be different.

On another front, I'm at 46K words for Prospect Road, and for probably the first time ever I have no clear idea of what the end of the story is. But I'm having fun with it, which is some consolation. Oh, and Afterwar? doing that thing with the verbs might be paying off. I don't know. Anyway, I did realize that the word the writing group probably wanted instead of passive is static. Because passive means something grammatically, and it's not "excessive use of appositives (if I remember that right) and progressive past."