I've had a fairly productive day off (I mean, it's not over yet, but the productive portion probably is). I rose this morning, took Heather to the train station, returned home, and got diligently to work. I typed in everything I've written longhand so far on the Bridge novel, doing some on-the-fly revision (including switching a first-person section to third person, because I decided it would work better that way). The actual narrative only amounts to about 6,000 words so far. Eep. Only about 84,000 more words to go. While I'm capable of writing 90,000 words in a month while holding down a full-time job (I've done it before), I'm not capable of doing anything else at the same time, and since I'm unwilling to give up spending some time with Heather in the evenings, I'm going to try to write 90,000 words in three months instead. That's a mere thousand words a day. Which is enough to keep momentum going and insure some consistency of voice, but not so much that I'll feel overwhelmed. I think I have a good plan here.

Then I went out. I went down to my car and found a parking ticket. Sigh. Street sweeping here is on the second and fourth Monday of every month, which I've never paid attention to, because I'm never here on Mondays. But I was today, and I got a $48 ticket to show for it. Bah. So I went grocery shopping, which is always wonderful during the day (lots of parking, nearly empty store), then returned home. The UPS guy dropped off a package containing Joe R. Lansdale's Dead in the West from Night Shade Books, a zombie western short novel. I'm going to review it in the next issue of A Certain Magazine. (Dead in the West was first published in serial form in the '80s, and appeared as a book in the mid-'90s, but this is a "considerably revised" version with a new copyright date, so it's fair game for review). I'm almost done reading it, and once I sign off here, I'm going to go sit on the couch in the sun-filled window and finish it.

Man, what a nice day (parking ticket aside). Birds are singing, sun is shining, Heather will be home soon and we'll eat garlic bread and pasta and drink cold beer, new episode of 24 tonight, games, books, art, love, possibility; I'm a happy boy.