I have So Much Stuff to Do. Some of the things that I could have spent today doing:

• Paying bills


• Doing a little work on the grant proposal that I'm editing that's due in a week


• Doing my laundry, so that I'll have clean shirts to wear to work next week.


• Cleaning up the pile of books and papers that hopefully still has my desk under it somewhere.


• Grocery shopping

Here's what I've actually done so far today:

• Slept late


• Had a long leisurely bagel and coffee with Daniel and his sister at Berkeley Espresso.


• Stopped by The Other Change of Hobbit and bought the paperback of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt.


• Returned my overdue library books to the Berkeley Public Library. (Okay, that one's really sort of virtuous and responsible, but I like going to the library.)


• Had a long conversation with my sister about her job search and life in general while sitting on the benches outside the Berkeley Public Library. Local homeless people listened with interest as I dispensed career advice. I love my cell phone. But if Stephanie's going to keep having major life epiphanies, I may need to opt for a calling plan with more minutes.


• Spent a couple of hours over lunch and another cup of coffee working on my current fiction work-in-progress.

Well, okay, I can't exactly call that wasted time. I'll pay the bills after I'm done with this journal entry.

So, Stephanie apparently decided this morning that she's so completely fed up with living in San Diego that she's ready to move to the Bay Area even if she doesn't get the job she interviewed for at UC Berkeley. She phoned my mother to announce this plan to her.

My mother thinks that this is a completely loopy idea. She wants Stephanie to stay put until she finds a job, and then move or not move accordingly. She also thinks that the job market in the Bay Area is crappier than that in San Diego. (She's probably right, generally speaking. But I think the job market for college student advisors might well be better up here, since there are more colleges and universities.)

So, Sturm and Drang. The relationship between my mother and my sister is an odd one to me. Probably because I'm the older one, my mother long ago started treating me like a responsible adult: she's not shy about letting me know what she thinks, but she doesn't really expect me to bow to her will in major life decisions. She's either decided that I'm adult enough to make up my own mind, or stubborn enough that it's pointless to argue with me. Conversely, I don't necessarily feel the need to consult her before every decision.

But my mom and my sister are still seem to be playing out a script that casts my sister as a teenager. My sister constantly phones up my mother to get her advice, and then gets upset when she doesn't hear what she wants to hear.

Eh. Stephanie's the only one who can decide if getting the hell out of San Diego/living in the Bay Area is worth the risks of making a move without having a job lined up. Personally, I think so: I think she'll be happier here in the long run.

So, ever since my phone conversation with Stephanie, I've been waiting to get a phone call from my mom demanding that I talk my sister out of her crazy idea. Hasn't happened yet, though.

Well, this is what passes for family drama around here. Pretty mundane as these things go.

Okay, I am going to go pay bills now. Really. I swear.