Between Boxes

July 15

Toil, and toil, and toil unto the grave.

I work on A Certain Magazine all day, and move boxes all night! And yet, oddly, it doesn't suck all that much. It's all fairly enjoyable.

We didn't actually sign the lease on Sunday. Our landlady, who is nice but seems a bit flaky, or at least very busy, canceled on us. But the back door was unlocked, and there were keys waiting in the apartment, and we were welcome to start moving in, so practically speaking there were no real problems (except for the slight uneasiness that comes from putting your stuff into an apartment that, technically, you have no legal claim to). Sunday we moved a lot of boxes, and then went to Lake Merritt for Mary Anne's birthday party, which was great fun. I ate about a million of MA's marvelous curry buns, which are a treat I get too rarely. I chatted with people (though, as usual, I didn't get to talk to Jed as much as I would've liked), and rested under a tree, and generally lazed about, which was nice after the uncompromisingly brutal sweaty hot hot hotness of moving boxes earlier. We moved more boxes after the party, too, because we are most virtuous.

Yesterday afternoon we -- yes! -- moved some more boxes. And brought a camping couch over to the new place, so we have a place to sit when we're exhausted from lugging 50 pounds of books up two flights of stairs (one flight from the street to the house, one flight from our front door to our living quarters). During the course of our moving, we met two of our new neighbors (who seem nice, young, horn-rimmed-glasses-style hip) and another neighbor's dog. Afterward, we went to the scary ghetto grocery store nearest our new place. It's difficult to describe, beyond the fact that it's quite dirty and the employees are smelly and don't have the usual number of teeth. The parking lot is full of trash. There are homeless people sitting on the benches out front, clutching paper bags with bottles in them. The store itself -- which is part of a not-universally-ghetto chain -- has a great wine and liquor selection. They also, inexplicably, sell televisions, boom boxes, and clothing, which every other location of this chain I've ever seen does not. There are huge disorderly piles of product piled randomly in the aisles. There were people in line for the lottery ticket machine. That kind of grocery store. Ever read Joyce Carol Oates's "Thanksgiving"? You know the surrealistic A&P in that story? It was like that. Anyway, we bought some wine and ice cream, and I helped settle an argument between a toothless cashier and a belligerent customer over whether a given article of clothing was a pair of boxer shorts or a pair of swimming trunks (it was the latter, as I cleverly deduced from the pattern of tropical fish and the inner mesh netting, and the fact that it was a freaking pair of swimming trunks), and then Heather and I headed home.

She's off running errands now -- buying supplies for our Potential Kittens, in fact -- so I thought I'd grab a moment to update before she returns and we commence our nightly toil. Other accomplishments are thin on the ground. Not much writing going on. Not much reading, either, sadly. I did call and get phone service set up for our new apartment. Progress is being made. Our landlady faxed us a lease today, and we'll fax it back tomorrow. This time next month, life should be sufficiently settled for me to get back heavily into novel-writing, story writing, critiquing, editing, Star*Lining, reviewing, &c. The only remotely writing-related bit of news is Bluejack's review of "Down with the Lizards and the Bees", which is, as always, perceptive and fair. And generally positive, la.

Words written since February 1, 2003: 76,000

Words written since last entry:
Sigh.

Flytrap is ravenous. Feed it.