2001-04-25 - 7:26 a.m.

I thought I was being commendably blase about the next Elizabeth Peters novel that's due out next week - I haven't even bothered reserving my copy yet - but my subconscious apparently begs to differ: I've started dreaming about the characters again. Last night, Ramses sat at a desk much like my childhood desk, working furtively on a urgent project that involved Edison sockets (which were missing, though we had plenty of candlesleeves) and piles of dirty laundry.

Of course, it could just be that an incomplete errand was still niggling around in my craw: I want to replace a burnt-out bulb in our dining-room chandelier, but when I took the bulb to Home Depot, they said that it was a very rare size and that I'd have to try Loews or a specialty lighting supply store. When I got home, I glared at the chandelier - and realized that the remaining bulbs in the fixture didn't match each other: the turkeys who used to live here had used whatever was handy - which included several bent-tip bulbs, which explains why that shade always looked off-kilter, because it is - it can't sit properly on the bulb. The BYM shrugged at this discovery: "I don't like that chandelier anyway." So, we'll replace it someday, but in the meantime, I'll have to trudge back to HD and find an interim fix. I should be glad that I've been let off the hook - that I no longer have to decide whether to get six matching bulbs and thus waste the ones that are still operational - but when I'm in a glass-is-half-empty snit, I tend to be easily irritated at having to deal with other people's half-assedness.

But, as always, the day was not devoid of pleasures: