Here's a fine song you can download free at Amazon: "Reconstruction Site" by the Weakerthans. [Hmm, it appears the download is no longer available. Sorry. Take my word for it, great song!] Great lyrics, and I love the way it ends (abruptly, but satisfyingly; the same way I often try to end my stories!).

Last week sucked in ever so many ways, culminating in a Friday where everything that could go wrong did, pretty much. I won't bother you with the gruesome details -- it's mostly just work-related rushing-around things. But I'll give you an emblematic example: my boss was having his carpets cleaned, so we'd moved all his (nice, wooden) furniture outside. After the cleaners were done, we all went to have lunch to wait for the carpet to dry a bit. As we left the restaurant, I noticed looming rainclouds welling up from all sides of the sky. By the time we got up the hill, thunder was rumbling. We almost never get thunderstorms in the Bay Area. So the three of us had to frantically rush around, carrying large pieces of furniture into the house, trying not to slip on the still-quite-wet carpets, putting little bits of plastic under the furniture legs so the floor-cleaning chemicals wouldn't hurt the wood. Racing the rain. And my boss has a lot of furniture. My lower back is still unhappy with me about the whole thing. Anyway, there were lots of other chaotic things last week (including a first-thing-in-the-morning trip to our printer in Hayward, to replace a disc that they couldn't get to open), but you get the gist. The rainstorm thing is representative. I'm ready to just put it all behind me, now.

I've got a three-day weekend sprawled out before me. Since I came in on my day off last week to help schlep furniture, I'm taking Monday off instead. Whoo! My to-do list for April is long, but I should be able to get through it. I just have to read two books, write three reviews, finalize Flytrap layout, read a fuckton of short stories, send a contract back to a publisher, work on my Bridge novel, finalize the wedding guest list, revise my story "Crawlspace of the World", go grocery shopping, and get a haircut (that last bit is happening this afternoon). And at some point in there I should relax, since I had a stressful week.

Tra. La. La.