I have a funny girlfriend; funny in that she makes me laugh and funny in her ironies. Janet hates faeries. That's why her website is deadfaeries.com. But she is so incredibly good at painting them. Plus, she get requests and commissions to paint them, and since she would rather have money than not, she paints them, though they are the bane of her existence. She showed me one this morning which she just finished, called "Scarlet", that blows my mind. The color, the mischeivous smirk, the paintbrush held casually like a cigarette. It's a phenomenal painting, exquisite in its simplicity. But Janet just kind of shrugs her shoulders and says, "Enh, it's a faery."

"One Less" is ready to go out. I'll be putting it in the mail to John Kessel as a sample of my most current writing for grad school, as well as to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for publication consideration. F&SF is always a good first market to send stories to, since they usually reject them within a week. The Third Alternative is good for that too. It feels really strange, not having a single story out right now. My non-fiction piece "The Old Switcheroo" is still under consideration by Darrell Schweitzer, but that'll only pay a penny a word; it's more about the exposure in that case. So it'll be good to send out a story again, then get it back, send it out again, get it back, etc. Hopefully, I'll have a little more clout with my Clarion experience, enough that it might get the story out of the major slush pile and into someone's hands a little quicker. Some of my fellow 2002 Clarion alumni are already having success with the big markets.

Sometime in the middle of eating Greek food and reading screenplays this weekend, I'll need to start studying for the GRE. It's only three weeks away now, and I haven't done squat yet.

My company (Environmental Specialties) was nice enough to feed everyone today. So now I'm sitting in front of my desk, pleasantly full of Eastern North Carolina barbecue and potato salad. Good stuff. Just hope it doesn't make me sleepy later.