South, to Augusta!

Appointment with the allergist, sigh. I've managed to avoid this for, oh, eighteen or nineteen years -- since we moved to Maine and all the trees in the state decided to try to assassinate me. This year...I dunno...maybe I'm just tired of it. So, we'll go find out what I'm allergic to. Fingers crossed that it's not cat dander.

In the course of excavating my office from the Rubble of Writing(tm), I find that I have...too many stones. Yes, I'm one of those intensely annoying people who pick up stones and rocks -- beach stones, lake stones, woods stones, side of the road stones... I display them among the other bric-a-brac, but -- I've hit critical mass, and I can't choose which ones to get rid of. These aren't, you understand, Just Stones; these are 'Way Cool Stones that I Found Myself. Sigh. I'm guessing the best thing to do is just gather up all of them (even the ones with the teensy crystals? even the ones that had iron veins, which rusted out, leaving a Really Interesting Shape?) and put them outside. They're stones, for heaven's sake.

Um... Maybe tomorrow.

Yesterday, Steve and I recovered the living room, got all of the boxes unpacked and books reshelved. I found the Mencken Table, and hey -- we have a floor in the living room, too! Amazing.

I have now finished reading both Local Custom and Scout's Progress and can therefore commence Staring Balefully at Nothing. Or I would, except my backbrain has helpfully provided the idea for one of stories for the Yule chapbook. You guys are gonna like this one...

I'm outta here.

Well, that was...something

And so...I'm slightly (very slightly) allergic to...dogs...and some few weedy things...and a couple varieties of mold, but, really, who isn't? I am not, mind you, sensitive enough to any of these things that the doctor was willing to use the word "allergic," preferring "irritant." While this is Good News, it leaves open to wonder Just What Exactly Is Going On. Sigh. Nose drops for four weeks, and regroup. If no better, then I get to have my sinuses x-rayed. Somehow, this proposition fails to fill me with joy...

This was my very first time having an allergy test, which made me a minor celebrity with staff, and I must say that I have a whole new appreciation for the Death of A Thousand Cuts. Happily for me, I had taken along blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which is utterly absorbing. I can't wait to get back to it.

In other news, we had a thunderstorm this evening; the sun is out now, and the sky as blue as if it had never rained...