Chinese Fire Drill

Setember 6

8:30 a.m.

Good morning, lovelies. I'm up early for the express purpose of writing an entry for you. Aren't I good to you? I wasn't in the mood to write an entry last night-- indeed, I only sat at the computer for an hour or so, writing some e-mail and reading journals. Not that I didn't write-- I'm still a proud member of the 1/24/31 Dare. I wrote just over a thousand words yesterday, and also did some sketches of settings and some general note-taking... I'm happy with my book, comfortable with the idea of writing it for a while, living with the characters.

Congrats to Mike on his novel-nibble! Wish him well!

Yesterday at work was good; a little driving-the-boss-around, a little book-shuffling. I've been given some more clearly-defined responsibilities, which begin today; stuff I'll be expected to do on a daily basis. That's kind of nice, actually; it adds a little routine and stability to a job that is, by definition, mostly unpredictable...

I wrote on my lunch break at work yesterday, actually, in longhand on my boss's deck... very satisfying, to come home in the afternoon and not have the "need-to-write" specter hanging over me...

Let's see... yesterday evening Heather and I went walking over the hill to Piedmont. We had dinner (my treat, as I got paid yesterday; whee!). And then-- to my great delight-- we sat at a coffee shop for a while. Reading Flyboy and watching the occasional episode of Sex in the City was making me desperate for some sit-and-drink-coffee time; that's all the characters do in those entertainments! (well, except fight crime in the former, and shag in the latter). So I read and had coffee and became happy happy. Then we came home and read a while, intending to watch some delectable videotaped stuff... but then we started kissing, and, well... it's not as if things between Heather and I have been less than passionate; we haven't even been dating six months, and things are still very, very hot. But last night was unusually hot, a quantum jump to a different level of hot, a hotness level that would be most difficult to sustain on a regular basis. So we had some good fun. After that we chilled on the couch. We watched a very affecting episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the more effective explorations of grief that I've ever seen. It dealt with a lot of the same stuff I tried to in my story "Little Gods of Grief." I have some strong feelings about the way death is dealt with in fantasy, which I might get into another time (when I don't have to jaunt off to work soon), and Buffy played by all the rules.

On a completely unrelated note, I went to a big Chinese grocery store the other day... besides the signs in Chinese, and the vastly-cheaper-good-quality produce, I was struck by the weird little differences... packages of chicken feet in the poultry aisle... salmon heads in the sea-food section... a bin in the meat case labeled simply "Goat"... the giant mutant coconut... "beef ox tails"... very odd. Slightly disorienting. I guess it's a good thing I'm not an interstellar explorer; the least little difference makes me look around like a wide-eyed hayseed, seeking further anomalies...

Well, there's more to say (there's always more to say), but I've got to dress and head workward. Ta, all.