I've been listening to an audiobook -- Songs of the Humpback Whale, by Jodi Picoult -- but I'm not enjoying it much. It's a story about a family of husband, wife, 15-year-old daughter, and the people around them, and the husband is a complete ass. Books about truly unkind people who feel no compassion or understanding for others always upset me, especially if these people do not get what I consider to be their just deserts. Jodi Picoult seems to write a lot of books which attempt to show the perspective of what I consider to be unsympathetic characters. I find these efforts *interesting* ... but (as I said) sometimes upsetting.
I devoted some time this evening to cleaning off my desk, which I hadn't done in *years*. It's amazing the stuff you unearth after that much neglect. I found numerous "to do" lists with *almost* everything crossed off, numerous lists of books I heard/read about and want to get from the library someday, instructions for electrical devices purchased who-knows-when, 2 AAA maps of Oakland/Berkeley and 1 of San Francisco, all folded bizarrely to display the particular area I was apparently visiting, about a million business cards (most of which had appointment times written on them), my pedometer, a photo of me in Paris around 1998 (I had this out because I planned to put it on my website at one time), many black-and-white photos of my dad (because I planned to make a webpage about him, and still hope to do so someday), my great-grandmother's photocopied memoirs (which I had begun posting on my website, but petered out partway through), etc. It was like an archaeological dig.
Some work remains for tomorrow, but tonight I made a major dent in the towering piles, so it all looks relatively unthreatening now.
Uh oh. Shannon is ready for bed. He and the sleepy cats are waiting. Must run.
