I just retiled my kitchen floor, how super! (Linoleum self-stick tiles, nothing grouty or wot.) It took an hour and was terribly easy. I wish I'd done this ages ago, it looks so much better, although still quite ugly. We also fixed the stupid drawer that's been broken since I moved in some 11 months ago. Ha! Take that, shitty harvest gold kitchen!

My week off will continue as planned. I will see the two towers again, have a new year's eve party of special boringness, go for lunch with my mum, and if this mood keeps up, probably tear down the entire apartment and put it back in upside down and painted purple. Or, er, finish my sweater or something. I may be trading up for a nice tall bookshelf on monday; perhaps I'll rearrange my books again.

I had stopped reading the koran for a while. I was tending to get all wrapped up in it and losing the ability to stand back and ask "what do i think of this, really?" But now it's been a week or so and other than feeling terribly aware of when I eat any pork (how silly!), my mind has quieted to a pleasant neutrality about Islam; I think I'll continue reading it this week.

Some of the prose, just by itself, is so lovely. Recite! Recite in the name of your Lord who created, created man from clots of blood. Recite! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One, who by the pen taught man what he did not know. That's still my favourite, but I am not far in at all.

I finished Tam Lin. What an odd book! Two pages of it, total, are paranormal or well, science fiction-y, in any way; the end felt kind of Sheri S. Tepper, the bizarre twist that feels so out of place. Yet it's so charming; I think I'll buy my own copy. I can see that rereading it will be fun. Except where she misquoted Tolkien, hmph, but secretly that just makes me feel terribly clever for noticing it at all, so there you go. Hee. It makes me want to read shakespeare, which would doubtless do me good. All I've ever read is Merchant of Venice, the opening sonnet of Romeo and Juliet, and some miscellaneous other sonnets. Hamlet at the least I should read, I think. How would that go with the Koran, I wonder. I think concurrent reading is a natural high all too overlooked. Literature can be so powerful; mixing up sketchy literary cocktails must have some illicit potency to it too. Ho ho ho!

oops, time to go. ta!