Life has a funny way of doing what it wants sometimes.

I was in Borders tonight, wandering around, desperately trying not to buy anything, testing my willpower to its limits. I stepped into the cafe to get something to eat, and I noticed the long line at the counter. It was around 7:15 by this point, and my stomach was really growling, so I decided to leave and go to the Cookout around the corner. But before I left I noticed two women at table near the door, one a blonde around thirty with a thick Southern accent, the other a small Asian woman in her early twenties. The blonde would look at a notebook on the table and say "Okay, gotta. When someone says they want you to pick up their dry-cleaning, you say 'I gotta go to the store.'" Then the Asian girl would repeat the sentence in a strong accent, slowly repeating the words as if they were the most important in the world. Then the blonde would say "Now, gonna. When someone asks where you are going, you say 'I'm gonna read a book.'" Again, the repetition. The blonde woman was teaching the Asian girl how to speak fractured Southern colloquial English. I could only laugh and shake my head as I walked out of the cafe.

A girl called me tonight, one I was sure I would never hear from again. Her name is Kim and she works in the office of my apartment complex. I called her Monday night and asked if she would like to go to a movie sometime, keeping in mind a fantastic French movie I saw a few weeks ago, called Amelie. I asked her, and she said, "Wow. How about that. Um, you kinda caught me off guard here. Can I call you when I get home from work?" I said sure, and didn't hear from her for the rest of the night, which was pretty much par for the day, having gotten my story "Songstress" rejected from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and gotten rejected from the job at UNC that I had interviewed for. Needless to say, Monday was a really depressing night. My best friend, Jason Miller, called and cheered me up a little bit, but I needed to take a few nips from my bottle of Malibu coconut rum before the night was over. So, Kim didn't call me Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights, and I figured that was that. But tonight, at around 8:30, she called. She's seeing someone and just didn't know how to tell me.

I haven't gotten much work on the novel done lately, what with life getting in the way. I've been too busy partying and chasing girls. A few short stories have popped into my head, one about a guy who takes a mid-morning walk during a smoke break and wanders into someone else's life, another that is basically an autobiographical rant on why girls won't go out with me lately, and another which is a Christmas story describing how Mary from "Book Storey" met her husband. So there hasn't been a total lack of creative endeavors. But I really want to get back to the novel.