I slept in until noon this morning, and feel so much better.

Last night, I had to sit through forty minutes of reports on President Bush's colonoscopy and the alarming number of children raping children on CNN before they got to the story on Philip K. Dick that I thought was going to be an hour-long special. Instead, it was a two-minute glossy story that really didn't tell us anything, and I was a little pissed.

(For those of you who don't know, Dick wrote some of the most phenomenal books and short stories in science fiction in the latter half of the twentieth century. His Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was made into the movie Bladerunner, his "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" was made into the movie Total Recall, and his "Imposter" and "The Minority Report" were recently made into movies of the same names. His stories often focused on the nature of reality and the impact of technology. I read UBIK for John Kessel's science fiction survey class at NCSU, and it absolutely blew me away.)

So anyway, after wasting forty minutes of my life, we came back upstairs and started a game of Mafia, including Leslie and our Week Four instructor, Geoff Ryman, who just arrived yesterday evening. I only stayed for one game before going to bed, but I was one of the Mafia, and we won the game without any of the Mafia getting killed. Heh heh. I wonder what it says about me that I'm getting so good at being duplicitous. Hmmm.

Leslie gave her final class this afternoon on career goals and what we can do to achieve them. My five-year goal was to have published my first novel as well as numerous short stories, and be working on my second novel. Whether this will actually happen depends on too many factors, but it's what I'm working toward anyway.

The second Clarionite reading is tonight at 5:00, and I'm a little nervous, but that usually happens when I read in front of a large group. My pulse beats visibly in my throat and my ears burn. But it's something I'm trying to work through, since if I have any success in this business, I'll certainly be doing public readings. I debated on whether to read from my three short pieces or a novel chapter, and went back to the short stuff since the novel is only five chapters old, and it's still pretty rough.

Afterward is our margarita/pizza party, which should be fun. It's nice to have something to do on a Saturday night.