In Which Our Ant Colony Is Overturned

July 12

We've passed through the period of greatest ugliness and chaos, and emerged into a somewhat cleaner house. Most things are boxed, now. The pictures and such are down off my walls (all except the odd German calendar, where the weeks begin with Monday and end with Sunday). The books are all boxed, except for erotica/sex non-fiction, and my to-read pile. This afternoon we hauled a couple of huge sacks of clothes to Goodwill, and took a box of used books to sell at Moe's & Shakespeare. That was depressing; they bought a few crap paperbacks, but didn't want any of the good stuff. Moe's doesn't even buy hardcover SF/Fantasy. So we wound up donating a lot of books to Goodwill, too. Ah, well. Somebody will pick up a copy of Russ's The Zanzibar Cat (we had an extra) for fifty cents and be very happy, I hope.

Our landlady showed the house to a few people today, and it wasn't too traumatic, and none of them tried to steal anything, so all's well, for now. There are further disruptions ahead, alas, including repairmen at 8:30 a.m. next week, when we're normally stumbling around half-naked in search of coffee. Bah.

The good news is, we get to start moving in earlier than we expected -- tomorrow, if all goes well. The lease officially begins on the 15th, but our new landlady ("Call me Carm.") says we can sign the paperwork and start taking stuff in tomorrow. She said she'd knock $100 off the first month's rent if we agree to paint the trim ourselves, and we said, sure. We have to come up with rent money for the first month, now, which will (surprise!) make us broke again for a while. Sigh. It's a good thing we don't need an entertainment budget. Moving boxes is our entertainment! So tomorrow, once we get the papers signed, we'll start lugging boxes of books and clothes and such (with a pause in between to go to a birthday party). Next weekend we'll get a truck and fill it with furniture and try to find someone to help us move stuff. We can carry most everything ourselves, but I'll need help with the couch especially. We have nearly three weeks to get everything out of here and over there. Shouldn't be too difficult, doing it incrementally like that. Every evening we'll transport a few more things. La la la. Very exciting. New space, whoo!

I wrote a bit today, after selling things and pretending to help Heather clean up the yard (I was actually watching ants, since there was a different colony in every potted plant she overturned, all running around like proverbial crazy idiots when the dirt hit the ground. Many of them had wings. So cool). I looked over the Afterword I'd started for the collection, and deleted it all, because it sucked, and wrote a new one, which doesn't suck. 2700 words. It's almost like a good writing day! Heather's going to proofread it for me tomorrow, and then there's nothing left to write for the collection except the dedication and the acknowledgements (the latter of which I'll just put on the end of the afterword). [Okay, I took a break to write the acknowledgements, so it's 2900 words, now.]

I read Scott Nicholson's The Harvest to review, and it's very very good, better than The Red Church. I'm now reading 13 Horrors, a good horror anthology, also to review. I'm looking forward to getting a copy of Nick's collection, which I hope to review as well, though it may not make it in until the October issue. So many riches. It's an embarrassment thereof.

What else, what else? I printed my collection, again, to send to another writer/editor who might give me a blurb. I got a print of the artwork that's going to be on the book cover, and it looks great, can't wait to frame it.

Moviewise, we watched Labyrinth tonight (Heather had never seen it!) and Arsenic and Old Lace (Heather had never seen it!), and earlier this week we watched Daria: Is It College Yet?, which was wonderful, as one would expect.

Now, sleep, and tomorrow, signatures, and parties, and carrying heavy things. Tra la.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 76,000

Words written since last entry:
2,900

Flytrap is coming. Soon-ah. The more money-ah you send-ah, the sooner the kingdom-ah of heaven-ah will come to the Earth-ah!