I've had two successive dreams about returning to California, or not being able to leave in the first place. The primary emotion of said dreams was beleaguered resignation. Which was pretty much how I felt every time I left and came back in non-dream life. The first dream, however, also involved me being served a dish of live seafood, with, like, tiny prawns skittering about on a bed of rice. I am not sure whether I ate any; thankfully, I have no visceral memories of trying.

Speaking of California, I finally got to take my California license plates off my car. I kind of want to display them, or one of them, because I enjoy using everyday objects as decoration, and because I am pleased by the way my having them to display means that my time in California has passed. But I'd need to figure out some way of displaying them that doesn't look like, yeah, California pride, because at this point California basically feels like my bad ex. Any ideas, friends who are more visually oriented than I am?

I am beta-reading a thing and it is ridiculously satisfying. I really *like* editing things. I will confess to being an occasional backseat writer and--while reading fanfic, or professionaly published books, or (less gratifyingly), old things I wrote--taking great pleasure in pinpointing where something isn't working and why and trying to puzzle what would make it work better. Not out of meanness or competitiveness or spite, and not because what's been written is bad (there is, I can tell you as someone who does it for (minimal) pay, very little pleasure in puzzling out what's wrong in bad writing), but because I find the mechanics of language and story endlessly fascinating and I like to poke them and see what makes them tick. So getting to do that and have that actually be helpful to someone is pretty cool. (Actually, come to think of it, I also do this as a book reviewer--pull out the specifics of what a piece of writing accomplishes or doesn't and why--and that is satisfying too.)

Also, this is Britcom, which is probably my fandom with the most skewed ratio of Degree to Which I Am Invested vs. Opportunities to Geek Out, so it is nice to add a bit to the Opportunities to Geek Out column.