winter must be here. it slipped down to 49F last night and Santiago slept under the covers instead of head on my chest. it's not raining although there is a 30% chance that it will but the sky is bright blue so I don't know just exactly where the rain is going to come from. one thing about san francisco weather is that it doesn't do that wait-ten-minutes thing. blue sky in the morning generally means sunny all day whereas gray sky generally means the sun might come out around 2pm but the fog will come right back at 4.

soon it will be time to relight the pilot light. catherine and I never could do it but sandy doesn't have any problem. I might try later today and see if there is some secret inscription that only sandy can see there where the instructions are written. not that the heater is of great value: it's one of those gas radiant type heaters--no fan--that makes the 10 cubic feet around it and, I assume, the whole ceiling, quite toasty. the one good thing is that we have downstairs neighbors right now so once they get their heat going we get to benefit from the physics of living on the top floor. makes up for the summer time. when we have a summer time that is.

I could do work today or I could take a second day off after working like a fiend yesterday. I have not yet rationalized the need for two days off per week beyond the fact that one day off apparently does not help me very much. on the other hand I have things I should be doing and the deadline for the 100-page dissertation is looming much more closely now that it is november. I have 80 pages so it's not too scary but I can't stop now. I could work today and take tomorrow off I suppose and that would make me feel a little more virtuous today but in the end what's the difference.

the difference is that if I work today I will have worked today and tomorrow will be whatever it is.

I need a vacation in a bad way. because my credit cards don't work anymore I don't know how or if I can get a car to go to the desert this winter. taking a citycarshare car on a week long vacation is prohibitively expensive and I might as well get sleeper tickets to seattle and back for the amount it would cost. I wonder if I know anyone I could talk into coming with me whom I could also stand camping with for a few days. maybe the answer would be to ask a friend who is allergic to camping to go down there with me, stay in a hotel while I sleep in my tent, and we could get together for a hike every day. that sounds just about perfect, actually. truth is I really prefer to camp alone and there are maybe two people in the world that I would go camping with and one won't camp for all the money in the world and the other says she likes camping but always changes the subject when I bring it up. well there is one more person I'd go camping with but she's far away and her car is dying. (hi zyrc!) hm. maybe we should sink some money into that truck.. I've got a little that I can't spend on a rental because of the aforementioned credit cards no longer working.

so work or not. I think I will sit and think a little about it.