Apartmentalized

June 29

We saw lots of good apartments yesterday (well, three -- the fourth one had a dingy frat-house quality). One of the apartments has a staircase that goes nowhere, just terminates in a wall, an artifact from the days when it was part of a single house! And there's exposed brickwork, and a slate floor in the dining room! Let me hear you say "Yum!"

Another place is an in-law apartment at the back of a house, with a big bedroom with lots of windows that open out (rather than sliding up, you see), and a two-tiered patio in back, shaded by redwoods. It's small, but very cute, in a great neighborhood, with a really cool potential landlord.

The best place is near our current location, but on the good side of the hill, by Piedmont Ave. It's got a big living room, big bedroom, and an office that's about the size of my garret. It has a big claw-foot bathtub, and brand-new, never-been-used stove. It's nearby, so moving our stuff over there would be easy. That's the one we're most hoping for, but I could happily live in any of them.

We went to drop off rental applications today, having spent last night and much of the morning filling them out (props to Scott for helping me find the address for the landlord of the Other House on Maple Street!). This journal was helpful -- I would never have remembered the dates I lived various places if I hadn't been able to look them up in my archives. We got credit reports yesterday, and they aren't too bad. I had one bit of unexpected nastiness which I had to clean up -- a credit card I had in college that was, apparently, never actually closed, though I thought it had been years ago -- but that has since been taken care of (at some expense, sigh). Heather and I look pretty good on paper, I think. Here's hoping we get one of these nice places... I'm ready to live with Heather and no one else.

Want to hear something crazy? This journal is now the first hit for "Tropism" in Google! How terrible for sixth graders trying to research science projects! But kind of cool, for me. This journal is the second hit for "tim pratt", right after my much-neglected main page. My googlejuice glistens. Er. Or something.

If you haven't done so yet, go read Heather's potentially really cool strange news. We're excited. And trying not to get too excited.

Writing-work wasn't entirely hopeless this weekend, despite the apartment-hunting and so on. I did 1,200 words of reviews -- Sheckley's Uncanny Tales and the anthology Shadows Over Baker Street. Also sent off Star*Line proofreading and worked a bit more on the Afterword. Signed and mailed the contracts for Little Gods. I didn't have time to work on the robot collab, but I should be able to tomorrow, perhaps in the morning. The major project for the week is revising Rangergirl. There's going to be the entrails and organs of a novel strewn all over the place this week. Not to be disgustingly visceral or anything.

Today Heather and I went up to Telegraph to do some shopping. She surprised me by buying me a wonderful, insanely-ergonomic, quite expensive, presumably quite durable backpack (Heather says it's engineered better than a suspension bridge). I'm fond of it. My old backpack (which I borrowed from D. to take to Clarion and then never gave back) went kaput, its zippers wholly broken, so I needed a new bag desperately. This one looks like it could be run over a few times and still work fine. I hit the various used bookstores, something I haven't done for a while, and stocked up. I got: Zeitgeist by Sterling (the only one of his books I've not read yet); Aimee Bender's collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt; Jim Knipfel's The Buzzing, which sounds interesting; and Peter Beagle's A Fine and Private Place. I also picked up the newest issue of The Third Alternative, which is my favorite fiction magazine. Apart from Flytrap, which doesn't count, as it's not yet been published. (On a related note, I'm going to have to put off paying Flytrap contributors -- they'll still get paid on or before publication, just not early, as I'd hoped. Had some unexpected expenses this week.)

A good weekend, really. I had fun looking at apartments with Heather, and hanging out with her, and watching DVDs (we saw The 25th Hour, which was decent, and marginally less strident than most of Spike Lee's films), and so forth. It wasn't as hot today as it's been. Things are looking upward.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 71,350

Words written since last entry:
1,400

Flytrap is coming. Help us buy stickers which which to close the flappy bits prior to mailing.