Feeling a little better now; thanks for the good thoughts from everyone in the comments of the last entry. Y'all rock. My insecurities are now safely tucked back where they typically hide. The story that got ravaged last week turned out to be salvageable; I'm taking out one embedded narrative and making it its own story, and I'll be rewriting the rest.

If you're in the Raleigh area, please come down to the Helios Coffee Company tomorrow night to hear me, and several other NCSU creative writing grad students, read from our work. It's at 8 pm and shouldn't last much longer than an hour. I haven't decided whether I'm going to read from my latest story, or pick something a little older and more audience-friendly.

In other aural literary news, the eternally young Richard Butner will be doing a reading at Internationalist Books in Chapel Hill at 8 pm on September 16. Also, Chuck Palahniuk will be reading at the Bull's Head Bookshop on the UNC-CH campus at noon on September 22, and will do another reading at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham that night at 7 pm.

I had a presentation today on an essay about dismemberment in Titus Andronicus, and it went well. I find that I'm no longer quite as nervous in front of crowds, which is nice. I did repeat myself a few times, but all in all, it went pretty smoothly, and I easily took up the allotted fifteen minutes.

I was antsy tonight and needed to get out of the apartment, so Janet and I tried The Vineyard Cafe near campus, and we were lucky to get a seat. The place seems to be a popular college hangout, and they have free wi-fi, which is a definite plus. Janet surfed the web on my iBook while I critiqued stories for next week. It was a little noisy, but it all converted to white noise after a while. I'll definitely be going back there.

And since coffeeshops seem to be the theme of today's entry, I'll go ahead and recommend Global Village Organic Coffee. It's got a great atmosphere, and they serve the best coffee around, bar none. I go there many mornings before class, and Mike the owner knows me as a regular. All their coffee is organically grown (natch), and Mike has made a point of getting the word out on voting in this next election. It almost feels like the coffeeshop should be in Carrboro alongside the Weaver Street Co-op Market and Nice Price Books. With the number of shops closing down on Hillsborough Street lately (including the Starbucks two doors down from Global Village), I really hope they stay open.

***

A fantastic joke, told by Kyler at her concert this past weekend:

A North Carolina woman is sitting next to a New York woman on an airplane. The North Carolina woman decides to strike up a conversation and says, "So, where are you from?"

The New York woman says, "It's bad grammar to end a sentence with a preposition."

The North Carolina woman says, "Okay. So, where are you from, bitch?"

Now Reading:
Argosy issue #2

Stories Out to Publishers:
8

Books Read This Year:
47

Zines/Graphic Novels/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
26