Well, it's another Monday morning, and once again I'm so tired I can barely concentrate enough to type. It happens every weekend. I stay up Saturday night, either to watch SNL or just out of habit, and can't get to sleep Sunday night until 12:30 or 1:00 a.m., and am consequently a barely conscious automaton relying on his involuntary systems to get him through the Monday morning. Tea. I need tea. English breakfast, mmmmmm...

This will be a bit of a rambling entry, and I apologize now.

This weekend was nice and lazy. I read the rest of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones Saturday afternoon, watched Liar, Liar, messed around a bit. That night, I took the laptop over to Borders and got 800 words written (or re-written) on chapter 2 of the novel. While I was writing, I couldn't help noticing the bratty teenagers bossing their parents around to get them coffee and chocolate and other legal stimulants that would make them more hyper and whiny than they already were. The girl couldn't have been more than a sophomore in high school, but she was dressed like she was going clubbing later. I couldn't believe her parents let her out of the house like that. (A general rant about the state of our voyeuristic fashion-slut society has been building for almost a year now, and I will write about it soon, but not now.) The boy might have still been in middle school (or junior high), and would not shut up. Typical for Cary teenagers; they grow up with rich parents who give them everything, and start expecting it. When I have kids, I'm pretty sure I don't want to raise them here.

Sunday was an afternoon over at the parents' house, after losing an hour to stupid Daylight Savings Time. We went to Ruby Tuesday's for lunch to celebrate getting into graduate school. After we got back to the house, I gave them the copy of The Dream Engine that I'd saved for them, and we sat and talked about stuff. At one point, we went upstairs to see what was wrong with their digital camera, and no matter what I did there, I couldn't get it to work. So I brought it home to see if maybe it was a computer problem, and it worked with mine. As much as I hate digital cameras, I may have to get one soon. The immediacy of being able to see your photos is very enticing. I prefer film cameras still, because there are things you can do with them that you just can't with digital.

All this weekend (and for the past couple of weeks, actually), there has been a layer of clumpy yellow pollen on every outside surface. This time of the year doesn't typically bother my allergies, since the visible pollen isn't the stuff I'm allergic to, but it's the harbinger of things to come. Even so, the profusion of pollen on everything gave me a perpetual headache this weekend. After the visible oak pollen goes away, the pine pollen starts saturating the air, and I can't stop sneezing for around six months. It sucks.

This morning, it was raining when I woke up, and raining when I drove to work, and is raining still. Normally, I would be happy with this, since it's washing the pollen and dirt and crud off my car, but my windshield wipers stopped working this morning. Again. I took the car into the dealership a week ago to deal with this problem, and though they cleaned it all out (it was clogged with pine needles and other gunk), the wipers still aren't working. You don't realize what a vital little piece of equipment those things are until you can't use them. Try driving in the rain without them. It's lucky I got here in one piece. Guh.

Anyway, my tea has finished steeping, and I have work to do. Hope you all have a lovely Moon Day.

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Now Reading:
Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

Stories Out to Publishers:
12

Stories Sold This Year:
3

Novel Word Count:
5900