Pissing Rain

November 28

Rain turns Oakland drivers into idiots. It took me twenty minutes to get home-- drivers alternated between slothlike crawling and suicidal swerving. Idjits.

Went to work out tonight at the Y in Berkeley, second time this week. Heather and I are being all conscientious. I really pushed on the precor machine tonight, zoomed along, got my heart racing. Feels good. Had a nice rest-of-the-night with Heather, too, with snuggles and frolicking and Mexican food... the only bit of bad news all day is that Our Absent Housemate is moving out. She's leaving as of January first, which means Heather and I have to find a new housemate-- doubtless one who will actually, you know, be here sometimes. We've had it too good, these past few months, with the run of the house to ourselves, as Our Absent Housemate always stays at her boyfriend's (she has, literally, spent perhaps 1 and 1/2 hours in the house since I moved in. Total. Usually just dropping by to leave the rent check. She has not once spent the night here). Ah, well. The salad days are over. I wish we could afford to keep the place, just the two of us. The thing is, we could-- but it would stretch our budget to the very limit. We're actually getting our heads above water now, putting savings away, paying down our separate debts, and if we had to pay the full rent on this house, we'd lose all that. So, alas.

Work today was fun and weird. I started the morning by sweeping off the roof and cleaning out the gutters, which was actually a nice change of pace. I sang Buffy songs while I worked. Simple pleasures. Then I had lunch, a great soup my boss made from leftover turkey, and wild rice and mushrooms. We had good bread, too. Mmm. Nice for a cloudy day that later turned to pissing rain. In the afternoon I cranked away on the issue, laying out the review columns (not that there's a lot of creative layout, but stuff has to be formatted, and it's time-consuming), putting in pictures. I have two reviews in the January issue, of Knuckles and Tales by Collins and Demons by Shirley. Which means I should go update my Bibliography... there. Duly updated.

Oh, there's a chat with editor Steve Eller and some of the Brainbox contributors on Sunday, December 2nd, 9-11 p.m. in the Delirium Books chatroom (www.deliriumbooks.com). I doubt I'll take part, but I may stop in... it'll probably be interesting.

Other writing stuff, a rejection from Dave at Maelstrom, nice and thoughtful and reasonable. He liked many things about the story, but it ultimately didn't work for him. That's okay. I got two new toner cartridges for my Zippy Little Printer today, so I can send out a flurry of submissions this weekend.

I'm just a hair over halfway through Black House. It's still awesomely good.

I'm going to see Clive Barker read at Cody's Books in Berkeley on Friday; probably Heather will go, too. P'raps I'll see some of you there... I've never seen Barker speak before. I'm looking forward to it. It always cheers me up, seeing a writer who's richer than god...

Work continues on the Secret Project, which we should be able to tell y'all about in a couple of weeks, barring the unforeseen. We're in the home stretch, now.

I like the Dictionary of Difficult Words. Both the largish dictionaries in my house failed to disclose the meaning of "opopanax," but the DDW succeeded. Though it's a shame the definition is so boring...

Okay. The hour grows late. Farewell.

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