raven | I am the one who lives with the ocean

Stargate SG-1 has been cancelled. I have to say, I'm not exactly disappointed; at one point "Full Circle" was supposed to be the last one ever, and I remember thinking how it was a good idea they were ending it when it was still good. That was four years ago. Sigh. I don't think I've seen a single episode since RDA left, and while I've heard a lot about the new cast and characters, I've never mustered up the enthusiasm to check them out.

Anyway, enough negativity. Here's to you, Stargate - my first fandom, my first fannish friends, my first fanfiction, my one thing to look forward to every bloody week during one of the more horrendous years of high school - thank you for that. And rest in peace.

Interesting day today. It was my last day in work - well, supposedly; apparently I've got another one this week - and I spent it wandering around the village running errands for the shop. I get paid for sending parcels and buying kitchen roll. And for swatting flies. I will never stop being impressed by this. Anyway, the notable event of this morning was one of my favourite customers, a retired doctor with a wicked sense of humour, coming in looking for a book for his wife. "I don't know what it's called. Maybe The Stepfather's... Sister? Mother? The Stepfather's Daughter!"

Obediently, I tried all these combinations, and found out quickly that there's no British or American book with that title. I tried wildcards and shortened forms and hyphens, to no avail. He went off to call his wife, and Tony and I overheard him say, "Yes! I knew I nearly had it!"

"What was it?"

"Yes!" he said proudly. "The Time-Traveler's Wife!"

Apparently it is not a good idea to burst out laughing at your customers. But I just couldn't help it. And then he said, with perfect solemnity, "I have provoked great hilarity," and that just made me laugh harder. I sold him the book in between gasping for breath. Thankfully he is a very nice man and did not take offence. (The closest I'd got to laughing at a customer before was the woman at Christmas, who came in, looked at the counter and demanded, "Don't you have any girls working here?"

When I came forward, she whispered confidentially in my ear, "I'm looking for a book called It's Okay, I'm Wearing Really Big Knickers!")

In other news - actually, in news of small people and the other tribulations of a doctor on rotation - my mother got halfway through her brand new clinical handbook of paediatrics this evening and said, apropos of nothing, "You had femoral anteversion!"

"Er," I said. "What?"

She was getting very excited about the symptoms. "You learnt to walk late! And you have the funny sitting thing!"

"Wouldn't it have been more helpful," I suggested, "if you had reached this conclusion in 1988?"

(Regarding the funny sitting thing: get off your chair and sit on the floor. Legs out in front of you at first, then bent back so you're sitting on your feet. Now shift each leg outward so you're sitting on the floor, with your feet bent back so they're both sideways against the floor, at ninety degrees from your body with toes pointed. Does it hurt like hell? Congratulations, you do not have femoral anteversion.)

"It says here," she went on, "that it corrects itself by age eight years. Why didn't yours correct itself by age eight years?"

"Um," I said, "because I'm a bad person?"

Hell, at least she isn't pricking me with needles any more.

Right. Tomorrow, I write my feminism paper. I mean, I finish it. Also, I'm going to walk to the beach and into the water. Right now the tides are low and the waves are barely making any impact; one day last week I was standing there for ten minutes, staring out to sea, and I barely noticed the tide until I realised I was standing in water rather than wet sand. I'm going to miss the sound of the sea when I leave, and I'm leaving soon.

Goodnight, all.

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Dar Williams; The Ocean