I'm not giving this a subject, so there. Ha!

There's a new produce market just down the road. They have a sign out front with their daily sale prices. I've become convinced that they reach into a drawer every morning and pull out a number, take it outside and stick it up as the first digit for the price of lettuce. Every single day it's different, and it ranges from $.59 to $.89 to $.99 to $.79 to $.59 to $.69 to $.89, etc. I don't know why I'm so amused by it, but I've found myself watching the price rise and fall and it makes me smile every time. And I still haven't even been in the store.
--excerpt from the journal entry I wrote one year ago today

I don't know why I looked back to see what I was doing on this day last year, but it's a funny little coincidence--I was actually in that new produce market just today. It also happens to be the produce market that my parents bought ten months ago and I spent five months last year working in. The new owner has changed the place around a lot--ever been in a produce-and-furniture store? No? I must confess that I have thoroughly enjoyed the privilege of buying produce right at the grocery store, but we need to give him some business--he's a good friend of my dad's and he was "raised up with" my mom, as the old-timers put it. I was standing there, looking around and feeling overwhelming relief that I wasn't working there still. You know the only part I miss? The produce. I don't miss the people, I don't miss playing with the cash register, I don't miss the physical labor, but I kind of miss hanging out with the bananas and lettuce all day. It was soothing, in retrospect. You know what's really crazy? We stood there for a while talking to the owner, and my hands were itching to sort through the apples and make sure they were all fresh. It's a sickness, I tell you.

Well, I guess I also miss the money, but that's another story.

Other than that, I guess I've just been working on things that are very boring until I'm done with them. You know, when Carrie mentioned the project that eventually became Mosaic Minds, I was high on Nano and thought it would be great fun to have a writing project going. I'm still enjoying the thought of that, but imagine my surprise when I realized that, contrary to what I thought, my excitement for all things Web has not completely diminished (or gone into the West to remain Gala.. err, never mind.) It fed itself all through the process of getting the site up and running, and I'm actually feeling quite a bit of enthusiasm still for that project and the other parts I have in mind and for a few other things I have in mind. I'm back to reading list mail from a group of designers, and I'm reading news feeds, and I'm back to feeling like I don't have time for all my projects. This is completely ridiculous, of course, for obvious reasons, but still. I both love and hate the feeling of complete fixation and concentration, and I've had that a lot this year. It's fun, but it's also overwhelming. There's nothing like banging your head (figuratively speaking, of course) into a wall for a while to teach you how much you don't know.