Scratch what I said about autumn. It's been warm and sunny all weekend, straight-up glorious, actually. Today we came driving down Park Blvd. from Montclair and crested a hill, giving us a view of San Francisco Bay in the distance, shining all gray-blue against the hazy sky, and I thought, "Damn, it really is beautiful here." I'd live in the Bay Area forever if I thought I could afford it, but since Heather and I would like to own a nice house someday, we'll almost certainly have to move at some point. Not anytime in the next few years, though. We want to get our debts paid off first, and that'll take another couple of years. Then maybe we'll hightail it for parts undecided.

I woke up yesterday with that "It's on" feeling -- you know, like that Rilo Kiley tune says, "Sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on, and your friends all sing along, and they love you" -- like I could write anything, like I was bubbling-over with creativity. But, with one thing and another, all I wrote yesterday was a review of Joe Hill's wonderful first novel Heart-Shaped Box. Today I was feeling creatively sluggish again, and kept trying to sit at the computer and work, only to lapse into various forms of WAB (Writing Avoidance Behavior) -- filing things, sweeping, cleaning off my desk, etc. Eventually I decided maybe I needed a change of scenery, so I took a notebook and walked down toward the lake and settled at Café di Bartolo with a cream soda and a panini. Getting away from my usual desk did it -- I figured out a way into the scene I was working on, and made some good headway. Then I strolled back home and wrote a little short-short story. So altogether, it's been a pretty productive weekend, writing-wise. I'm creatively content, after a week of angsting about my writing for various reasons.

I'm reading Lisey's Story, Stephen King's newest, which the publisher actually sent out galleys for. The buzz is that this is King's most personal and ambitious novel in a long time, and it's being compared to Bag of Bones a lot, which is promising, since I think that's one of his more underrated books. So far it's very good, sad and weird and charming. It is, basically, about a long marriage, and even though my marriage has only been going for 369 days, I see a lot of familiar things in the novel.

I've been out enjoying the weather a fair bit. Heather and Holly and the nephew and I took our walk to the farmer's market yesterday. It's autumnal enough for there to be apple cider for sale there every weekend, so, yum. Heather and I went to Piedmont Ave. so I could pick up my hip new glasses (blue frames!) and contact lenses. We strolled around and went to the wine shop and the comic store, where I bought various things: Top Ten: Beyond the Farthest Precinct (when it comes to comics Paul di Filippo is no Alan Moore, but it was an entertaining enough book); Fable: Arabian Nights (and Days) (not as awesome as the last volume, Homelands, but I still like the series a whole lot); Ex Machina: Fact vs. Fiction (I liked the first volume okay, didn't much like the second, and was lukewarm on the third, so I don't know that I'll be reading this series anymore); and Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan (only just started reading it, but it's awesome so far).

Today we took the kitten to get her shots. Heather went shopping at Ikea to buy some much-needed dressers for the bedroom, an expedition I begged my way out of because I wanted to get some work done, though I had to help wrestle the boxes upstairs when she got home, of course. Tonight I'll make our kinda traditional Sunday meal of fajitas. Mmm. Good weekend.