I flew this weekend to Tucson, where one of my more freckled cousins was to be marking his bar mitsva. Here I'll take the opportunity to make a plug for Southwest for being on time and having friendly employees; I was going to add something about roomy flights, but my return flight, a very sardine-packing operation, prevents me.

Family's a strange thing. People I haven't ever said twenty words to gush somewhat ignorantly about my marriage prospects, urge me to visit whenever I have a chance. I would be poorer without family though: how else would I have met my aunt's sweetheart, who just built a flashing eight-foot humanoid out of used headlights, or his dad, a retired salesman and stand-up comedian with goggle shades and a Dalí moustache who's having the time of his life compiling a CD of songs about motorcycle life?! Not to mention the gossip about those who weren't there...

The air in Tucson had an amazing dry freshness, like it was bubbled over ice. The plants and the houses were colonists, tattered-looking landmarks in the sea of dust. We drove miles between restaurants in dense traffic; plenty to eat, air-conditioning galore, souvenirs and heirloom seeds. The locals all seemed to be in the process of finding the perfect little house in a few acres of grounds eighteen miles away at the very border of a national monument. Something was wrong, but what, exactly?

On with lunch and graphs.

two technical queries:

I want to get a Linux/Windows dual boot laptop - general-purpose, some graphics and numerical analysis. do I order something from Dell? is there a better way?

I'm researching having my school buy duplexers to enable double-sided printing in our printers. can anyone with experience in managing corporate printers speak to how much having double-sided printing increases maintenance, and how much it reduces paper use?

went to Malibu yesterday with a student expedition. we counted four birth-continents among the four in my car; in deference, everyone spoke English.

I hadn't made it to the coast since the summer sometime, too far back to remember. I was going more for the company than for the experience. once we found the turnoff from the PCH, I plopped on my old beach towel, applied sunscreen fastidiously, and took out my bag of trail mix.

then I climbed the cliffs, from the sand where a unhealthy-looking seal was lying up a combination trail-gully. I broke into a sweat (and remembered I didn't bring water) but was soon at the crest, a mosaic of dwarf needleleaf shrubs that smelled like licorice, cactuses, a cousin of rosemary. the sky was a perfectly uniform blue, and I looked down into the beach rocks, the surf, beyond to the ocean stretching out featurelessly Japanward or wherever.

the breaking of waves made itself heard: there was no other sound. I knew that the first incarnation of the Institute was in part of the coast, somewhere. if it had stayed here - would we still think we should find the zeroth-order rules of the universe? would we look for building blocks in the sea?

back on the beach, the tide started rising. the seal had gone back in and seemed to be swimming energetically enough just past a breaker. I considered it an invitation and waded in.

and the year expands, the year continues. my pocket calender keeps up, runs ahead of it, outlines it in black and red. the weekends get written on first, like the wooden envelope of some imitation Victorian house going up.

heard from my lawyer friend Jim about the movement of Uranus. a momentous shift, a cosmic foreshock, even if you can't say what, precisely, it will bring. apparently it is crossing the last few houses of one sign, on to some other - but I have most of them confused anyway, I usually need to make something up if asked mine. surely there must be few other places where it's not considered completely silly to have confidence the outer planets are guiding one's career. silliness just doesn't have enough scope here.

Kurt Vonnegut (my hero!) stopped writing, but happily is still talking.

on the general subject, I got a call for my first opinion poll, and out of relief that it wasn't the damnable phone company again I replied to some questions. later I wondered how many times you'd have to vote to have as much influence on national policy as a single poll respondent.

I looked up the Isaac Asimov story that came in mind: Franchise.

NewYearsEve. the sky under cleared somewhere between Nebraska and the Rockies as I chatted with the blonde woman next to me about teaching high school chemistry, evidently something she does. then down in the phantasm of Los Angeles, where hypersound amplified the desert hyperlight. back!

and it had rained - there were flowers - and the pre-Rose parade air smelled unusually fresh, as if millions of engines haven't breathed it. children snuggled in thermal sleeping bags, portable TVs played, OU students brought out the beer. and sometime around midnight cheering brought in 2003. those waiting for the procession stayed; I took leave to dream 2003 dreams.

in a different universe, there'll be a palindromic date this year. which greedy Roman emperor to blame for butchering February?

back in everyday. our library's moving all their books around for supposedly more efficient shelving. meanwhile, bumping into unexpected volumes. I found a French study of cleanliness since the Middle Ages - turns out people didn't avoid taking baths circa 1600 just because they were too lazy to heat water, but because they believed that soaking in water opens up their skin so that toxins seep in. each to their own; nothing as minor as the threat of plague would deter *me* from taking baths.

looking to buy stocks for my IRA suggested a small math puzzle. if I'm interested in a stock, I want to buy it when it's as cheap as possible, so the question's always whether to buy now or wait in the hope that the price will fall. suppose I know the price of a stock changes each day to a random value within a certain trading range, but I don't know in advance what that range is. I want to buy the stock within, say, a given month. what strategy should I use to maximize my chances of buying near the bottom of the range? does the answer change if prices are not completely random from day to day but are correlated with the previous day's prices, as actual prices are?