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We've left Linn's parents' house and are back now at her apartment. Kitana comes tomorrow. We're making taco salad, which makes me miss Gina. Taco salad is The Official Favourite Meal of Mint Manor. I wonder if Riley misses me at all.

The last two days were very lazy ones. I spent most of yesterday on Linn's parents' couch watching tv with Swedish subtitles (Psycho II and Father of the Bride II, for some reason-- I'm a little embarrassed at what the Swedish people must think of what appears to them to be popular American cinema... we're apparently sequel-crazy) and feeling slightly shy around Linn's sisters, both very friendly, vivacious, extraordinarily talented girls. (Linn snuck out to be with Oscar, who is leaving for a month in Italy tomorrow and was apparently too shy to meet me. ME.) Today Linn took me down to her mother's garden plot and we picked currants. Oh, currants. Beautiful currants. The most beautiful berry-- nay, fruit-- nay, plant-- I have ever seen. One of the outstanding memories of Amsterdam for me will be walking down a street with Matt and Kitana and Linn, sharing a fruit salad containing these tart little jewels. I'd never seen a currant before (I've probably tasted currant jelly and wine) and all I wanted to do was twine a stalk of them in my hair. And they just grow right there in the garden! What the! We picked them right off the stalk and I ate them right there. I want to eat them, wear them, paint them. I want to be one. They're exquisite. They delight almost all of my senses at the same time. They're very tart with just enough of a sweet edge to keep me thirsting for more of them. Why, why, why had I never encountered them before? They're food of faeries. I could go on and on about them. I won't.

News from home is that Kirsten's new laptop has arrived. This happens to coincide, apparently, with the demise of our iMac. Apparently something shorted out and it won't start up. I think it may be unfixable. That means I've lost a hell of a lot of files, not to mention a working computer at home. I've been told that Kirsten is very willing to share her laptop with me and even registered me as a co-user, which is a wonderful thing for her to do, but I won't be taking advantage of this piece of generosity. God knows I had to promise Tante Joan enough times that I understood that it is to be Kirsten's Computer and Not Mine (which I found more than a little insulting, by the by, as if I were just laying in wait to snatch it from my sister's hands, a greedy child unable to control myself-- but I promised, I promised until I thought my eyes may well roll out of my head). And, frankly, we have enough boundary issues when it comes to personal property, Kirsten and I. She needs something that is just for her use, and I need not to be treating all of her property as an extension of my own. (I also need not to be reminded that I'm on Borrowed Time when, say, a chat that I'm in runs a little long or an eBay auction is about to close when I'm in the middle of an email. I fully believe that Kirsten's generosity is purely intentioned and very real-- I bitch and moan but she has always been very willing to share, much more than I-- but I also know that we are both human and the temptation to play the Whose Computer Is It Anyway? card would be too great for anyone to bear in the last few seconds of a hot eBay countdown.)

Dinner is ready and I've gotten that out of my system. I hope that when Kirsten reads this entry she derives the appreciation underlying my bitterness, which is not directed at her but merely at that cold bitch, Circumstance.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 5:14 PM | shower me with attention