5 1/2 Days

October 16

So, the weekend, and the week to date; semi-productive, though important things are left all undone...

Friday night we tried our damndest to be mellow young monkeys, because Heather'd gotten some more stressful news, and we needed to chill. We ate semi-bad pizza and watched an unquestionably bad Kirsten Dunst movie. (Oh, I did manage to write another 500 words of my ongoing Marla story at lunch, though). After a while we got somewhat motivated, and finished writing the guidelines for Flytrap, which cheered us up immensely.

Saturday I woke up, for some reason, at about 5 a.m. I couldn't go back to sleep, so I got some work done instead, getting half a dozen stories ready to send out. I made coffee, and read a bit, and generally enjoyed my longer-than-usual morning. Heather and I did laundry at the strange little laundromat around the corner, and discovered it was cheaper and had better dryers than the bigger laundromat we usually frequent. Wish there was something like the Brainwash in the East Bay... it'd be nice to sip a good latte while my wash tumbles, instead of reading a week-old newspaper while sitting on a suspiciously-colored velvet-upholstered chair that the laundromat management clearly acquired through a dumpster-dive. I miss the days of having a washer/dryer in my house -- I never thought I'd go back to laundromat living. Living with Heather is worth a little inconvenience, of course, but I miss that aspect of the lonely old days...

Saturday evening we went into the city, to a gay bar where Heather's friend Richard bartends. It's a neat place, dark, with a bizarre found-sculpture sort of décor. We talked to Richard's husband Ricky for a while, and it was pretty fascinating -- Ricky is a costumer, and he worked on Poison Ivy's suit from that Batman movie, among other things. We all had dinner at the aforementioned Brainwash, where I ate a Burger of Doom (mmm, tequila-soaked bacon). It's a serious contender for Best New Burger in the forthcoming Tropism Everything Awards... A duo called The Rusticators started playing, and the audience consisted of us, a surly guy at the bar, the homeless guy who buses tables at the café, some guy carrying a giant duffelbag, and a dude sleeping on a couch. We watched for a few songs -- they were pretty good -- then slipped out, feeling bad, since our leaving decimated their audience by half. Such is the life of an artist, though...

Heather and I were supposed to go to a party in the city, but we blew it off for various reasons, and spent a very frolicsome evening at home instead. Wonderful! Though we wound up too tired to go to the other party we were supposed to attend later, too, and were thus far less social than we'd expected to be.

Sunday we went up to Berkeley... and I put a down payment on Heather's engagement ring, which we're having specially made. It's cool, and should be pretty, and we're not buying a diamond (and thus not supporting African warlords!), and it's not going to break me financially (bless Shawna McCarthy for buying "Fable from a Cage", though -- that check is paying for the ring and financing the first issue of Flytrap, la). Much happiness. Heather bounced. We lunched at Bongo Burger, which was good -- but couldn't compete with the Burger of Doom. Then we went to Café Marcelo, ostensibly to work, though I didn't get much done -- read a story I'm supposed to critique, but didn't manage to actually write up a critique. Mostly I read Wizard of the Pigeons instead...

Monday was work, which was workish. I wrote a bit at lunch. Heather rented some movies, and we watched Resident Evil (good clean mindless zombie fun), and I made full-on badass nachos for dinner, complemented by Heather's fine guacamole (though we were screwed by the grocery story; two-thirds of the avocados were rotten. That's what we get for buying 98-cent avocados, I guess... if it seems too good to be true, and etc.).

Tuesday, I worked, came home, did dishes, wrote the previous pseudo-entry. Susan came over to watch Buffy with us -- I'm really liking this season so far, good episodes, though I totally called the ending of last night's episode. I managed to get a little work done, and bounced the collab back into Nick's court.

Today was a manly day. I rose early (and Heather rose with me!) and we went to Mama's for breakfast, which was super-yummy; if you've got to be up early, it's a good place to be. Then I bought oil and brake fluid at the 7-11 and poured them into my car. The brake light's been flickering, and I was afraid I'd have to shell out major money to get them fixed, but it seems to have just been a low-fluid situation. I'm pleased with myself; understand, I feel like a hero if I take my car to get the oil changed, so diagnosing and fixing even so elementary an automotive problem by myself makes me feel good. I dropped Heather at the BART station and went to work, where I ended up crawling around under the house, drilling holes through the floor, stapling cable to things, and other such physical tasks. Filthy work, and rather more tiring than my usual sit-at-a-computer tasks, but strangely satisfying, too.

Now I'm home. Not sure what's ahead tonight. I guess anything could happen.

Words written since February 1, 2002: 175,900

Words written since last entry:
1,500

Send me a bandana with bananas on it.

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222

Flytrap will never bite the hand that feeds it.