Fish and Dishes

May 9

The days go rumble-tumbling by, and at last it's Friday, and there's bliss and langour before me -- apart from buying a car tomorrow morning, going to see music and fireworks tomorrow night, and working my ass off on reviews and Star*Line stuff (both of which I should've done last weekend, and must do this weekend). At least I did the dishes last night, so the kitchen isn't a pit of deadly obstacles and filth like it usually is on Saturday mornings.

So we're getting a car, a '94 Saturn, which we're getting super-cheap because it has some body damage (ie, a big ol' gash on the driver's side door) -- it doesn't affect the functionality at all, though, and I don't care what our car looks like, so, good deal. It's in amazingly good shape; our mechanic was astonished to see a car this old with such a pristine engine. It needs some repairs, natch, and new tires, but nothing too painful. Heather found it, talked to the owner, talked to the mechanic -- she did everything, and she rules. I would've bought the first piece of junk I looked at, just to save myself the difficulty of looking further, so thank the weak nuclear force that I wasn't the one in charge -- I just lent intermittent moral support and, of course, I'm putting up half the money...

Buying this car will make us absolutely, horribly, painfully broke for a bit, though -- it's going to wipe out both of our bank accounts. The first two weeks of the month are always tight for me, because that's when I pay all my bills -- the second two weeks are always a cakewalk, with lots of extra money on hand (well, "lots" is relative, of course). Fortunately, I've been sticking money into my savings account whenever possible, so by wiping out my savings I can pay for my half of the car, but then I have almost literally no more money until I get paid on the 19th -- I'm going to have a low-double-digit number of dollars in my bank account until then, and will have to resort to the despised credit card for buying food and gas and such. At least I paid my bills for the month, though, and we won't have to make any payments on this car, we'll own it free and clear, which is nice. Gonna be a tough couple of weeks, though. I had a $20 check for a reprint sale in my mailbox when I got home this afternoon, and I nearly did a little dance, because, hey, that doubles my net worth! Woo hoo!

But once we get a couple of more paychecks, we should be okay. I'll be able to pay for Rio Hondo, and for expenses related to Wiscon. Which is coming up so soon! Whee, Wiscon!

Anyway. On to non-car-related, non-financial things...

The Frog novel continues apace. I've done 2600 words in the three days since I last posted a journal entry (this morning wasn't very productive, unfortunately -- I couldn't concentrate, for no discernible reason). I also sent a story to F&SF, and another to Lingering Dementia (the editor wrote me a couple of times to ask for a story, and this last time he offered to let me send a story by e-mail, which was sufficient initiative and kindness on his part to rouse me from my laziness and find something he might like). And, as I keep forgetting to mention, my poem "Ts'its'tsi'nako", latest in my "A Bestiary" series, is up at Strange Horizons. This is one of my favorites so far. My story "Down with the Lizards and the Bees" will appear in the August issue of Realms of Fantasy, available around the first of June. The story was supposed to appear later in the year, but then some artist blew a deadline on another story, and they had a slot to fill in the August issue, and since the artwork for "Lizards and Bees" was finished already, they decided to run mine. Unfortunately, that means there's not time for me to proofread galleys, so if there are typos, it's not my fault, this time. I also proofed galleys for "The Sea a Deeper Black", which will be up at Abyss and Apex soonish -- it's a better story than I remembered, actually, I like it a lot. Hope y'all do, too.

Last night we went out for sushi with the ever-lovely Susan Marie, to celebrate Heather's Polyphony sale (and have you seen their Table of Contents? Holy mother of pearl that's a line-up! I mean, it's no Flytrap, but still...). Afterward we hung out (well, mostly Heather and Susan hung out while I washed the great mountain of dishes, because I was in the mood to be industrious that way). Later Heather wrote -- she's been deeply diligent about writing her YA, I'm so proud of her! -- and I read more of Singularity Sky, which I've nearly finished. Lovely revisionist space opera.

And anyway. It's late. Tonight we watched Ghost Story, and afterward, being hungry for the real written Straub, I finally read "Little Red's Tango" from Conjunctions, and thought it was marvelous, should've read it sooner and... yawn... consciousness drifting... erm...

Words written since February 1, 2003: 46,300

Words written since last entry:
2,600

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