Good weekend! I was not quite as insanely productive as Heather (who cleaned the house from floorboards to rafters, read submissions, and finished a story), but I got some good stuff done. The Komodo dragon story is bopping along nicely, about 2,000 words long so far, and not quite halfway done.

This weekend Heather and I sat at Au Coquelet and wrote together. We bought the new Optic Nerve, and I read it sitting on the curb outside a going-out-of-business Eddie Bauer store, while Heather picked over the store's contents. Good comic, but it's the first installment of a three-part story, which is a bit disheartening, since Tomine took two years to finish this issue. Even under a best-case scenario, with his usual year between issues, it'll be next spring before I get to read part two. But so it goes; something to look forward to.

We watched a couple of movies, I Capture the Castle (pretty good) and Spirited Away (good, sometimes brilliant). I also spent some time in the backyard, now that spring is springing up all around us, swinging in the hammock, sitting in the grass, drinking beer, reading Carol Emshwiller stories, writing poetry. Just about as lovely a weekend as I could ask for, honestly. I took a walk tonight through our neighborhood, which is starting to smell like jasmine, and the air was warm, and I was just staggered by how good it felt to be alive, and in love, and writing stories.

I started the new work schedule today, and getting up an hour early wasn't bad, but then, I'm more-or-less a morning person. Heather, who is not a morning person, managed to resist the urge to eviscerate me for being too cheerful, and I tried to avoid actually singing, because, you know, that would only have further enraged her. But I felt like singing, in my boisterous, off-key way. See, the sun is out in the mornings now, the clouds have parted, and I love the way the rooms in our house looks in the morning sunshine. Light is a marvelous antidepressant. Working nine hours isn't all that rough, and it'll be more than worth it when I get up Wednesday morning, take Heather to BART, come back home, brew a pot of coffee, write all morning, and read all afternoon. It's worthwhile to rearrange my life a little to make more room for my art.