Setsuled's Journal

I'm tired. I'm not exactly sure what's going on. But yesterday I moved everything out of my room, including the furniture, and I was told we were going to need to be out of the house on Tuesday. Only I awoke this morning to find my grandmother was gone, and my mother, also trying to figure out what's going on, had called my grandmother to find out she'd rejected staying at one aunt's house because it smelled weird, had decided to sleep in her car, but changed her mind and is on the 8 freeway looking for a hotel. I'm still here, meanwhile, having managed to set up the computer in the upstairs guest room, and the two guys working downstairs on my room aren't wearing masks. Looks like the carpet's been torn out and there's a plastic covering over the door with a big pump attached.

The cats are terrified, but at least nothing's being done to my aunt's room, so I don't need to worry about them. I'm mainly just deciding what I can do to-day. I suppose I can catch up on my reading. I'm up to page 25 of Narbonic, which is still so far a pretty good series. I'm almost done with Maggie the Mechanic, and I'm about a third of the way through Catch-22, which is a book I'm afraid I must at this point describe as no more than mildly entertaining. Maybe I just wish it had stronger threads, maybe I'm just sick of the relentless tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes the character peculiarities are genuinely interesting, especially in the context of a commentary on war--like Yossarian's unabashed acts of self-preservation or Dunbar's fondness for people he doesn't like in order to stretch time. But then there are flat, cartoonish characters like Chief Halfoat whom I just find tedious. I do sort of like the references to war as being a business where strangers blow up strangers. War as a dehumanising bureaucracy is a good picture to paint, to be sure . . .