form and function

I am fascinated by the aesthetics of the book I'm reading. Of course, the book is fucking You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers. It was his own publishing company that published the damn thing, of course he could give it whatever kind of aesthetic he pleased. So I'm sure you've all seen it; the text of the book starts on its own cover, and continues on the actual first page. It's not even the first turnable page, it's that page that's glued to the inside of the cover. And the text continues to the very end of the book, save one blank page just before the back cover. Is the point here that this is a book that is all book? I'm not sure how I feel about Dave Eggers, but I like his writing. And I appreciate his interest in the aesthetic of the book. I like meta. It's not quite meta.

I am perplexed by hugging protocol. Am I supposed to hug my coworkers when I see them in social settings? I like hugs, but I don't like to push hugs on other people, because not everyone is a hugger. I also sometimes have this bad habit of making gagging noises when people hug me, like they're crushing me.

And elevators: how much conversation or lack thereof is necessary to make riding in an elevator with one or two other people not uncomfortable? I always find myself rummaging unnecessarily through my purse or the newspaper, so I don't seem as deliberately unfriendly as I feel like I'm being.

I also found out last night that acclimatize really is a word, and it means the same thing as acclimate, so I totally didn't make it up. My mom pronounced "respite" like "respEYEte." A friend pronounced the "g" in "poignant." I cannot speak without tripping over several (at the very least) of my words, often smashing 5 words into one. It's a wonder that I'm still such a fascist about pronunciation and word choice. I'm always correcting my brother, and tonight I even corrected Lindsay. He said something about groveling and commiserating with a friend about how their girlfriends are gone, and I said, "Groveling?" This was after we'd had a conversation about the whole respite and poignant thing. I felt like a little bit of a jerk.

The ants are back in my room. I've only seen one or two at a time, but I am certain there are more, possibly lurking within my carpet. I must find them and destroy them.