I'd filter this if I remembered who I'd talked to about it.

To those who might have been hoping to see me in New York in early October, I must tell you I will not be there. The family wedding I would have been attending has been postponed. Though I am not in close contact with either of the principals, I am given to understand that this is a question of logistics and practicality rather than of affection, so there ought to be no concerns raised on that front.

There may yet be an opportunity for me to attend their wedding in the greater New York area, or then again they may, for all I know, decide to get married with only their parents and a minister present (I am not the parent of either party, nor am I a minister of any kind, which is how you can tell me from skzbrust if you're in a hurry and can't think how else do so; also potentially useful information for telling me apart from people: I am shorter than jonsinger) or run off to Gretna Green or something else completely. Should I receive any information that seems directly relevant to getting together for dinner somewhere outside my usual run of dinner locations (Gretna Green, for example), I will be sure to let you know.

More later, but probably not about this, because I can't think what more I'd have to say about this. Except that I haven't previously wanted an icon of myself in Regency dress, but suddenly one seems appropriate due to my unexpected and bizarre fixation on Gretna Green. I expect if I lie down the feeling will pass, only it hasn't for several parties of my acquaintance, so I'm a bit worried on that score.

If I'd stuck with astronomy I could have discovered the complicated star.

Last week on e-mail one of my best friends asked how I am. Not, "Howwer yewwwwwww?" as in, "Fine howwer yewwwwww?" But really asking. The kind of question from the kind of friend where it deserves a genuine answer.

I was on the computer when the e-mail arrived, and I was not in the middle of something else, and he was still on, and I hadn't talked to him in awhile, and I thought, "I'll write right back."

I sat there for 45 minutes.

It's me, so I didn't just sit there. I paid the electric bill, and I went down and made some more ginger tea, on which my life depends these days, and I put away the earrings that had accumulated above my keyboard as earrings do accumulate above my keyboard, and I did lo these many other small tasks, and after each small task, I took a breath and looked at the e-mail I had open with, "> How are you?" ready to go.

I eventually decided on, "Complicated." When I told timprov about this, before I got to, "Complicated," he suggested, "Variable," which is also true and has the advantage that there is such a thing as a variable star, which overcame my unfondness of the word in early grade school for when people misused it in equations when it was not, in fact, variable in a particular equation, but merely unknown. Eventually I got into some of the ups and downs that comprise complicated: effects and side effects, real and fictional social thises and thats, do-loops and modes of coping.

It's much easier to dive right in with one anecdote than to try to say how you are, is I think the moral of the story, and my one anecdote is that right now it takes me 45 minutes to come up with an approximate answer to how I am. So.

More Carter Hall stuff next time, then.