We live near a limo company. It's based in a house near here, with their driveway and the one for the house next door full of stretch limos, and a row of Lincoln Town Cars parked on the street out front. I'm not quite sure whether they're entirely legal, running a business like that in a residential neighborhood, but they're there.

I checked out their webpage, which carefully never mentions a street address, or even whether they're in Maryland, DC, or Virginia. Probably just as well.

I actually rather like having them there. I suppose I might be less enthusiastic if I was right there next to them, but we aren't; we're close enough that we go past the place fairly often, either driving or on foot, but not close enough that they ever block our driveway or anything.

(Unlike the school buses. There's a school bus stop directly opposite our driveway, and I have, on occasion, had to sit there twenty feet from my driveway, waiting for the bus to move, while the frozen food in the back seat thawed.)

I find the limo company oddly fascinating. I like to guess about it. Why is it that on a typical weekday all the stretch limos are there, but the Town Cars are gone? Is it that they're all at the airports, picking up businessmen?

Most Sunday afternoons at least one of the white stretch limos will be out, which is presumably for weddings, but on the Sunday after Thanksgiving they were all in the driveways; I guess no one wanted to get married on the holiday weekend.

Saturdays usually see at least one stretch Caddy out somewhere.

We moved here in prom season, and of course on those weekend evenings both driveways were completely empty.

I also find it amusing to watch the drivers arrive for work -- guys in spiffy black suits with black gloves and chauffeur hats, getting out of battered Jeeps and Beetles.

I'll bet most of their customers have no idea that that spiffy stretch Hummer spends most of its time in someone's unpaved driveway on a quiet street, and its driver's own car is a little blue econobox.

I suppose it's a bit weird to take such an interest in an ordinary small business going about its normal operation, but hey, I'm a writer -- all kinds of strange things interest me.

We were discussing vacuum cleaners, and after reviewing the merits of Filter Queen, Eureka, and the like, I was thinking of the one we had when we lived in Pittsburgh, 1974-1977. It was a very nice vacuum, very old, a brand I don't think is around anymore, but I couldn't come up with the name.

Two syllables, I remembered that. Rowley? Rigby? For some reason I thought it started with R. Or maybe B. Or G.

Bagby? No, that was a mystery writer, George Bagby, but there was something that was sort of close about it. Bowlby? Garvey? No, those weren't right.

Obviously, I wasn't going to remember it right away, but it would come to me eventually. The conversation moved on.

Later, we were walking out to the car and I suddenly asked, apropos of nothing, "What was the name of the ghosts in Topper?"

Julie had no idea; she never saw the TV series, and I'm not sure she's read the Thorne Smith novel(s), either. I, however, had this very clear image in my mind of Marion...

Marion Kirby. That vacuum cleaner was a Kirby.

But why on Earth did I get to that by way of Topper? Why did I associate the vacuum cleaner with Marion Kirby, and not with her husband, or with the far-more-obvious Jack Kirby?

The human mind is a mysterious thing.

Last night Julie and I had one of our rarer-than-I'd-like nights out, and went to dinner and a show.

Due to time constraints dinner was just burgers at Fuddruckers -- we'd planned to do something classier, but things at the Bureau ran late, and the show started at 7:00, so we made do.

The show was at the Verizon Center, and was "Kaleidoscope: Skating, Song, and Survivorship," a cancer benefit put together by Scott Hamilton and friends. At least in theory it's going to be a TV event, shown on Fox on Thanksgiving Day after the football game, though I didn't see it on the schedule here. The main sponsor was Sanofi-Aventis, and there were ten cancer support organizations involved, but we mostly went because hey, it was a good show.

Our seats were nine rows back, near the stage end of the ice. Very good view.

They featured three famous cancer survivors: Hamilton, Dorothy Hamill, and Olivia Newton-John. This was Hamilton's first skating performance in six years, but he was still good, and still did his trademark flips.

Really, everyone was good.

Newton-John only sang one song, and that was backed up with a children's chorus (flown in from Santa Barbara), but it was nice. The other two singers on the program were Katherine McPhee and David Archuleta, who both have new albums coming out that they want to publicize, but Archuleta's is a Christmas album, so his three songs were all traditional stuff, not his own compositions.

Archuleta has an absolutely beautiful voice; I hadn't realized, watching him on TV, just how beautiful, as our TV's speakers aren't good enough to do it justice. He also looked genuinely happy to be there, and connected with the crowd more than McPhee or Newton-John; he's very endearing in person.

As for the skating, Hamill doesn't do a lot of jumping or other really difficult stuff these days, since she hasn't competed in years, but she's still performing, and still very good at it. She looked like she was having fun.

Nancy Kerrigan did a couple of performances, and while she hasn't competed in years either, she did include difficult jumps -- one of which she missed, but after the show they did a re-take for TV, so you won't get to see her fall; the audience was invited to hang around to provide background, which we did.

Ashley Wagner and Rachael Flatt represented the younger generation of skaters, and gave splendid performances.

Ice dancers Charlie White and Meryl Davis were beautiful. Davis is a tiny little thing, and beautiful quite aside from her skating, but on the ice they're stunning.

Johnny Weir was supposed to skate, but canceled at the last minute, we don't know why, and was replaced by Viktor Petrenko, who did two numbers, both of which were very slick and lots of fun -- a cowboy number and a mambo. The guy's a great showman.

I'm probably forgetting someone; it was quite a show.

Oh, David Foster (fifteen-time Grammy winner -- as a producer, if you're wondering why you don't know the name) was the host, and played piano for a couple of the songs.

Because it was being done as a TV show there were several delays while technical stuff got squared away, and some of the introductions got repeated -- in one case a skater was introduced, did her stuff, and then got announced again when they realized the first take of the introduction wasn't good. She did not skate again, though. The audience was also asked for random applause every so often, to be plugged in after pre-recorded stuff we didn't see, and we obliged -- the crowd was very enthusiastic. Not as big as we expected, actually, but loud.

All in all, we were there from 7:00 until 10:30 for a show that I believe will be ninety minutes on TV. (I don't think the actual skating began until 8:00, but stuff was going on before that.)

It was fun.

We had our long-awaited housewarming party Saturday. I think it went well; I had a fine time, certainly. There's leftover food that we'll be eating for awhile, but not too much; after a slow start we wound up with a pretty good turn-out. I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

That's the good news.

The first bad news is that I seem to have come down with a nasty cold; I first noticed a sniffle Friday night at a friend's house (no writing Friday; four-hour rule), and it's progressed to a headache and serious congestion. Dayquil held it off through the entire party, but has now worn off.

The second bad news is that our cat, Chanel, appears to be sick; she hasn't bothered to eat her last couple of meals, and spent as much of today as we let her curled up under my desk, not moving. She has an appointment with the vet for Monday.

The third bad news is that there's been something of a crisis at Julie's workplace, so she's been putting in a lot of overtime, and the party was the only reason she didn't go in Saturday. In fact, she did go to work Sunday morning. Bleah.

The fourth bad news is that we still don't have our new kitchen furniture; delivery was postponed yet again, and they're now telling us November 19th. Or later.

Sigh.

Saw the endocrinologist today, and was declared to be in good health except for the whole pre-diabetic thing. Blood pressure was down from 131/80 to 124/78, weight was up a couple of pounds, compared to seven months ago.

Except for blood sugar, everything tested normal. I think that's a first; usually sodium or cholesterol is low, or triglycerides are high.

Got new shoes on Wednesday. Exciting week.

Casting Dragon Weather.

I have an appointment with my endocrinologist next week. Y'know, when I was a kid I never expected to have an endocrinologist, but what can you do? It's an after-effect of spending years with a tumor in my head*. I've managed to gradually shed pretty much all the other symptoms, but I still take a tiny little pill every Friday** and see an endocrinologist twice a year.

Except the prolactinoma is long gone, my pituitary is behaving itself, so mostly the appointments wind up being more about me being pre-diabetic.

I got the blood work done Thursday. Lovely way to celebrate Guy Fawkes' Day, huh? Already got e-mail with some of the lab results. My blood sugar is creeping up. It's probably still short of actual diabetes, but it's well above normal. How annoying.

On the other hand, my cholesterol is just about perfect.


==

* Diagnosed June 2001. Had probably been there for a few years. Gone now.

** A half-dose of Dostinex, a.k.a. cabergoline, an ergot derivative that suppresses pituitary tumors. Wonderful stuff if you aren't in the 15% of the population who get headaches and nausea from taking it, which I'm not.

I've written a guest post for the SmartPop blog.

There's an essay of mine at Smart Pop, about James Bond.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 10/19/09

Last actual wordage added: 10/19/09

Pages added 10/19/09: 5

Current page count: 179

Estimated final page count: About 200

Deadline: None. Being written for serialization.

Comments: Yoshio is escorting Hsing back to the ship. I'm most of the way through Chapter Seventeen and have about 52,500 words written, with not very much plot left to go.

In other news, I've received my office copies of A Young Man Without Magic from Tor; it should be showing up in stores soon. (Official street date is November 10, but I expect it'll show up some places before that.)