It's about 10:00 on Wednesday night. We just got back to the hotel after having ice cream at The Dolphin; Bob's doing laundry. I told him I didn't think it was necessary, we brought plenty of clothes this time--mostly because it's been cool and he consequently hasn't worn all the shirts we brought--but he said that on vacation you should do things you don't ordinarily do, so he's doing laundry.

I'm really not entirely sure why, but I guess it's okay. I'm also not entirely sure about using the hotel laundry facilities, and just in case, the only clothes of mine that I sent with him were underwear and socks.

I bought a new watch today. I have this thing about watches--I love them, and I covet them, but I seldom wear them. I wore a watch every day for years, to the point that if I forgot it one morning, I would be lost all day.

So a couple of years ago, as an experiment, I forced myself to go without wearing one until I broke the habit, and now I almost never wear one. For one thing, it bothers me when I type, and for another, I really don't need one, since I sit at a desk all day, and have both the clock on the computer and a clock on my desk.

But I still like the way they look, and I still look at them all the time, especially Mickey Mouse ones. So especially when we come down here, where there are so many of them, I look in all the stores and think about buying one. The problem generally is that the ones I really like are way too expensive. I just can't justify spending $400 on a watch (which is what the one I liked best cost--it was a Swiss Army Mickey Mouse watch, or something like that).

So I'd pretty much convinced myself to resist the urge this trip, and I bought a cheap ($19.95--cheap is relative here) blue plastic Mickey Mouse watch on a stretchy band to get me through a week of "meet us at 1:30 at the flagpole on Main Street," "meet me at 1:00 at The Land," etc.

Then today while I was waiting for it to be 1:30 so I could meet Bob at the flagpole, I went into the watch shop on Main Street for one last look, and saw a watch I hadn't seen before. It was really pretty--all steel with a silver face, a "Limited Edition" with the Walt Disney World 2000 logo on it, and, very tiny, "Celebrate the future hand in hand." And it was on sale.

So I bought it. It's number 973 out of a total of 2000, and it came with a stupid huge presentation stand or display stand or something that I'd just as soon throw away, but which I realize I need to keep in case I want to sell it someday or something--my only real problem with that is figuring out how to pack it to take it home.

I'm happy with it. It's very cool. The price was a compromise--more than I would normally spend, but less than I would have expected to pay--it was a $100 watch on sale for $69.95, so I think that was a pretty good deal.

I bought a watch. Bob bought a hat:

I keep meaning to mention it, and keep forgetting, but S. L. Viehl, the science fiction writer whose website I take care of, has posted a new, unpublished, short story as a gift for her readers: Selene's Dagger.