Got a couple of nice rejections on Saturday. One from Fortean Bureau, who liked "King of the Traffic Lights" and thought it was witty, but felt the speculative element was too light; so I sent it to The Pedestal that afternoon. The other from Forrest Aguirre at Leviathan 4 who thought "Last Fare" was excellently written, gripping, and darkly funny, but ultimately decided the tone didn't quite fit the Leviathan series; that one goes off to Ellen Datlow for SciFiction today. The second rejection was a bit disappointing, but not terribly surprising; one of my biggest worries was that it wasn't "edgy" or "surreal" or "decadent" enough, and I guess I was right, as far as Leviathan goes. Mike and Janet both said that "Last Fare" is hands-down my best story so far, and I hope Ellen agrees.

This week at the day job is going to suck big time. Everyone is moving around in the office; we've moved from a departmental structure to a team structure. So instead of having a project management department, an engineering department, and an estimating department, we now have four teams each with a project manager, engineer, and estimator. (CAD is outside the team structure, since we work with everyone, so I won't be moving far.) Large area offices will now each house an entire team, which means new walls are being put up, and just about everyone on the second floor (where I work) is moving someplace else. Conduit is having to be rerouted, walls are getting knocked down, and the hallways are crowded with office furniture. A non-functioning door in my office was taken out and walled over with drywall this weekend, and I came in this morning to discover an eighth-inch layer of dust over just about every surface in my office, since the thoughtful bastards forgot to cover up my stuff before they started working. Good thing my monitor wasn't on, or the dust could have ignited and blown a big hole in the second floor.

Watched Spirited Away this weekend on DVD with the original Japanese language track and English subtitles. It was much better than the dubbed version I saw in the theatre (which is usually the case), and I like the film a lot better now.

Also saw the Cowboy Bebop movie and enjoyed it tremendously as well. Though the settings drawn reminded me a lot more of present day big city than they do in the series, where it feels more alien and crowded (they're on a heavily populated Mars). I wondered if I'd missed a step, since I've only seen through the 4th session of the series (out of 6), but I don't think so. That aside, the movie was very fun and cool, and the music outstanding as always.

Okay, back to work. Dust flies from the keyboard as I type, tiny sparks zap in front of my monitor, and I sneeze.

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Now Reading:
Fugitives and Refugees by Chuck Palahniuk

Stories Out to Publishers:
16

Books Read This Year:
26

Novel Word Count:
9200