I just watched the saddest piece of art ever wrought by humankind -- the episode of Futurama where Fry tries to clone his dog. I've seen it about five times, and it still chokes me up.

So, hmm. Many things suck. To wit:

Our shower drain is clogged (so is the neighbor's), and after spending a long time helping the landlord run the big crazy drain snake, it's not any better (in fact, it seems to be worse). He's going to have to get a plumber out here, I guess. In the meantime, we shower, then bail out the filthy water in the tub and pour it down the toilet. Sigh.

Our car still leaks when it rains. Not as badly as it did before I taped it up, but it's leaking from some other spot, too, besides the sunroof. No idea where. I suppose we could submerge the car entirely in a pool of water and see where the bubbles come out...

We bought a chest of drawers at Ikea, in an attempt to make our house slightly more organized. It took me almost three hours to get the thing put together (in addition to the frame of the thing, it had eight drawers, each composed of eight pieces, with more fasteners than seemed strictly necessary, and some parts required a screwdriver, others an alan wrench, others a hammer). In the course of making room in the bedroom for this new organizational device, we made a bigger mess.

We're having PO Box problems. Specifically, we went to check the PO Box on Saturday... and our keys didn't work. We're wondering if we missed the renewal notice? But if so, they didn't give us a lot of leeway, because we checked the box about a week and a half ago. And, naturally, we can't call to work this out, we have to go in person to the branch office. Which is only open 9 to 5, when we're at work. So we have to miss work to wait at the post office during the start of the Xmas rush to be told that we lost our PO Box, basically. Probably. Anyway, don't send anything to that address, if you've got it. If you need to send us something by mail, write me for our home address. I pulled that address down off the Tropism Press website. Fortunately, since we're pretty much sold out of Flytrap back issues, and haven't published a new issue since last May, we're not getting much mail at all there lately (it's been empty the last three or four times I went). At the very least, I hope we can pick up any mail that might have been in the box.

Some non-sucky things:

I'm getting over my cold.

Heather and I re-upped at the Berkeley YMCA on Saturday. We're both hopelessly out of the habit of exercising, and we used to do well when we went to the Y regularly, so we're trying to get back into it. We'll be going on Tuesdays and Thursdays and (maybe) Saturdays, to start.

I'm still plugging away at the Bridge novel. I doubt I'll have a draft by the end of the year, honestly -- my weekends are basically booked for the rest of the year, and that's my prime writing time. But I should be at least two-thirds done with it, I would think. And it's getting really fun. Hookers, gambling, and tattoos kind of fun. Serious fun.

Heather and I are watching Battlestar Galactica (the new version) and it's pretty good!

Charles de Lint wrote an awesome review of Rangergirl that will be in the February issue of F&SF. Gordon Van Gelder sent a copy to my editor, who forwarded it on to me, and it's wonderful. de Lint was one of my formative influences as a fantasy writer, so it means a lot that he really loves my book. Hearing from one of your literary heroes that you did good? That's a nice feeling.

So there you go. Ups and downs. It's a life.