Fireplaces are wonderful.

[randomness]

I've spent a couple of nights this last week sitting by, and poking at, the fireplace at the house. It's been lovely. There's the adolescent pleasure of poking at fire, which many of my friends understand, even if they don't share it. But while that would be fun for a short while, the real joy comes from hanging around with friends.

You sit, read, chat, hang with people who are theoretically working but actually playing Snood, and generally get warm fuzzies inside and out.

Stoner had left a copy of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver behind, which reminded me that the rest of his Baroque Cycle was out. At the local public library I found The Confusion but not The System of the World. I've been chewing my way through that, in front of the fire.

People stop by, attracted by the warmth, talk for a while. Some stay, some go and come back with work or toys. A social dynamic that's probably as old as the domestication of fire.

While reading a friend gave me a flashing LED pacifier (thanks, Alex!). I'd wanted one of them since one ended up hanging from the doorknob of my room at the Dulwich Hill hostel in Sydney last spring. Each morning it would appear on a different doorknob along the hall, and I didn't feel right about keeping it when it got to my door, so I passed it on. And now I have one.

Comments

[amelia-g.livejournal.com]

Hee hee, Pynchon is so totally one of those authors I think I should totally dig and just never got into. I think I own the world's longest-unread copy of The Crying of Lot 49.