Indulgence and Centruroides Sculpturatas

February 20

It's been a self-indulgent evening, so there's not much to say-- not a lot of drama inherent in me being lazy and following my small whims. Work was fine, busy enough to zip by, but not stressful. I put any thought of writing firmly out of my head, and I'm in a much better mental state because of that.

I read Slant, watched the Simpsons... D. came over to give me his ailing laptop. D is like Newt Pulsifer from Good Omens-- the opposite of a computer repairman. Technology has a tendency to sputter and smoke in his presence. So, while I know basically nothing about computers, I have a better track record at making his laptop work than he does. He left it with me and went away, and I fiddled with it for a while, got it to recognize the CD-Rom drive and convinced it to boot up. I'll give it back to D., it'll work for about three days, and then die again, if past history is any indication. Poor guy. Until he comes to get it, I have a laptop, so maybe tomorrow I'll have the novel experience of typing fiction at Pergolesi. Could be fun.

I had coffee and read on the café couch in a stupor of pleased languidness. The place was strangely unbusy tonight, as were the streets. I guess everyone is recovering from their President's Day excesses. I saw a cute girl reading Leslie Silko's book Ceremony, which is one of my all-time favorites, and I almost struck up a conversation with her. I can talk about Ceremony all night long, and I met Silko briefly when she came to my college, so it's one of my stronger conversational starting points... but then I saw the girl sigh and uncap her highlighter and start marking stuff and decided I shouldn't talk to her. I had too much fear that the conversation would go like this:

Me: Wow, Ceremony, that's a great book.

Her: [Condescending half-snarl] I hate it. It sucks. I have to read it for class to get my stupid multicultural credit. Stupid other cultures.

So I just read Greg Bear's tremendous infodumps instead. Such infodumps! Like, four pages of a scientist giving a lecture. But I like the book a lot anyway.

Oh, yeah-- my story "Plastic Scorpions" is up at Jackhammer. It's not going to change your life or reveal the mysteries of the universe, but it's short and fun and has a picture of a mason jar full of scorpions, so you should go read it.

Um. That's all. Buildings are big. I like food. Bye.

Total Word Count: 36,367

Today's Word Count: 0 (and no shame about it)

The Daring Darlings:

Jim C. Hines

Hilary Moon Murphy

Nicole Montgomery

Melanie Miller Fletcher

Karina Summer Smith

Anne Hutchins