rainweary

poopy rain. it's been raining steadily for something like 8 weeks. longer? honestly. there hasn't been a 24-hour stretch in that time without at least some rainfall. i knew was i get getting into, moving to the pacific northwest 6.5 years ago. i spent a year in ireland in college and adored the weather. usually i love it here as well but this is getting ridiculous. oh, and that's my house. the front of it anyway.

it's a good house except the front door (open in the picture) is swollen with the moisture and thus a total bitch to open and close. it's open so i can get back inside without bursting with expletives. stupid wooden doors. oh it makes me mad. we need to get a new door. that will be an ordeal to be sure. let's talk about that later.

kara and i watched the movie on a&e last evening about flight 93, the 9/11 flight with the passengers who fought the terrorists. i was totally tense throughout the movie, sweaty palmed. i shouldn't even try talking about it because words cannot impart the fear. they only minimize it, and that's not something i want to do.

so i'll shut up.

bedroom eyes

kara and sagan this morning.

have patients

here are quite brief descriptions of the jobs i transcribed today.

• an inpatient radiation oncology consultation for a 60-year-old female with a metastatic lung carcinoma status post radiation therapy and chemotherapy, with new brain metastases.
• an echocardiogram for a 90-year-old man who'd had a tia (transient ischemic attack, or mini-stroke).
• an outpatient pediatric cardiothoracic surgery consultation for a 36-day-old male with tetraology of fallot and trisomy 21 (aka down syndrome).
• an electroencephalogram for a 50-year-old male status post motor vehicle accident.
• a cardiovascular disease consultation for a 77-year-old male with heart failure.
• an operative report - a 39-year-old male underwent an epididymal nodule excision.
• an admission history and physical examination for a 56-year-old female with chest pain.
• an operative report - a 27-year-old female underwent a cystoscopy with hydrodistention due to interstitial cystitis.
• an emergency department note for a 30-year-old female with a sore throat.
• an emergency department note for a 102-year-old male who fell and sustained a laceration on his hand and one on his face.
• an operative report - a 35-year-old female gave birth.
• an emergency department note for a 13-year-old male who was hit with a rock and sustained a 1-cm laceration on his vermilion border.
• an emergency department note for a 40-year-old female with right shoulder pain.
• an emergency department note for a 1-year-old female with otitis media and an upper respiratory infection.
• an emergency department note for an 18-year-old female with right knee and left hand pain.
• an emergency department note for a 25-year-old female with abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea.
• an operative report - a 5-year-old female with chronic bilateral serous otitis media and obstructive adenoid hyperplasia underwent a bilateral myringotomy with tubes and an adenoidectomy.
• an emergency department note for a 78-year-old female with a bladder obstruction status post urologic surgery.
• an emergency department note for a 23-year-old female with spider bites.
• an operative report - an 11-year-old male with exotropia of dissociative vertical divergence underwent recession of the lateral rectus muscle in both eyes and anterior transposition of the inferior oblique muscles in both eyes.
• an emergency department note for a 43-year-old female with a viral illness.
• an operative report - a 24-year-old female desired permanent sterilization and underwent bilateral tubal ligation.
• an operative report - a 67-year-old male with carotid artery stenosis underwent a carotid endarterectomy.
• an emergency department note for a 33-year-old female with dysfunctional uterine bleeding.
• an emergency department note for a 33-year-old female with hypocalcemia secondary to a recent thyroidectomy.

this is what i'm up against.

numbers

ah. we have returned safely from seattle. i feel like counting things.

1. hotel. we stayed at the roosevelt hotel, on the corner of 7th and pine. quite convenient for the shops. we got there early, at around 1pm, and check-in time wasn't until 4pm. there was a room ready, however, so we were upgraded for free to a suite. sweet! it was a fine room. it didn't quite have the character we ordinarily look for in an older hotel, but it was fine. the mattress on the king-size (!) bed was wholly wunderbar. it was, if memory serves, a posturepedic encore 750 plush. we gotta get us one of those. the issue with the higher-end hotels, something with which i had not before been confronted, is tipping. the bellman brought our bags up and i knew i should tip him but i guess i balked. i was waiting for a window of opportunity, an outstretched hand, a clearing of the throat, but nonesuch occured. he left our room untipped. kara remedied that situation by passing the tip through the front desk person when we went for a walk a few minutes later. that seemed to go okay. on leaving the hotel at the end of our stay i was smoother and tipped the bellman with aplomb (much more valuable than a fiver).
2. movie. we went to see transamerica, and it was rather bad. i wanted it to be good; i so wanted it to be good. i love felicity huffman (though i'm not a watcher of "desperate housewives"), and she gave a terrific performance. it's that the story was boring. i would have been much more interested in seeing this character's daily life in the last week before the surgery. i didn't need the oh-i-have-a-son plot and road trip and the forced deceptions a la "three's company." but anyway. we saw it.
   
3. shopping. oh, we did some of that. kara found pants she liked and that liked her, and this was pleasing. we did a whole lot of browsing. we did make it to the elliott bay book company and i saw some people i recognized who didn't recognize me. (it's been 6 years and i worked there only a few months, so i didn't expect much.) i bought a novel by a favorite author of mine named nicholas mosley and kara bought a book of plays by craig lucas. it's a great bookstore; we were there over an hour i think. plus there was lots of window shopping along pioneer square.
4. birthday. kara's birthday was monday. it was serendipitous that paul scheduled his talk for that day. i gave her some marbles and let her loose on seattle.
   
5. fado. we had lunch monday at an irish pub on first avenue called fado. we drank guinness; i ate salmon and kara had a cheese sandwich (see the photo way up at the top). there was piped-in music and at one point a song called "half past two" by a band called the stunning played. i hadn't heard the song in years. on 12/26/1991, st stephens day, i was in cork, ireland, and that night my then-girlfriend ciara and i went to see this band. i love that song. i miss ireland.
   
6. paul. monday evening we went to benaroya hall and saw paul auster and his wife siri hustvedt have a conversation up on stage. they essentially took turns asking each other questions about their writing. i've read four or five of his books and one of hers, and maybe that's why he was much more interesting to me than she was. but he was truly great. i am inspired and galvanized hearing writers speak about their writing. i am brimming with ideas for the second draft of "nocturnal dyspnea."
7. dogs. we dropped them off at the kennel sunday morning and picked them up tuesday afternoon. kara worries about the dogs when they're kennelized. she dreamed, on the posturepedic mattress in the roosevelt, that sagan bit someone and max died. terrible dreams. but when we arrived at the kennel yesterday both dogs were fine. they had been well behaved and they were happy to see us. incidentally, the cats were fine as well, left alone in the house for two nights with the heat off as they were.

and now we are back in tacoma. i went to work today; kara will be home from work shortly. i think we'll have pork for dinner.

impending seattle jaunt

that's right, children. tomorrow evening kara and i will be looking at this handsome devil from the balcony of benaroya hall in seattle. paul auster. we're heading up there today, after we shuttle the dogs to the kennel. kara always worries when we kennel them, especially about max, because he's all but cachectic. but i'm sure they'll be fine. i hope they'll be fine. they'll probably be fine. anyway.

we're heading up there today, probably amid heinous traffic because apparently there's some massive football game in seattle today. go seahawks or whatever. so we'll get there when we get there.

two nights in the roosevelt! a little dinner, and maybe we'll catch a movie. and tomorrow, january 23, is kara's birthday. we'll do a little shopping. she wants to look for running shoes. i wouldn't mind stopping by elliott bay, one of the premier bookstores in all the land. browse a bit, look at books.

i was lucky enough to work in that store for a few months several years ago, but i got into a spot of emotional trouble and transferred to third place. i do feel a little foolish and fragile about what happened at elliott bay, but it was at third place that i met kara! i'm not one of those folks who say that everything happens for a reason or anything of the sort, though occasionally i do wonder what my life would be like now had i remained at elliott bay. different, that's sure. would i still be working there? would i have stumbled upon transcription? i wouldn't be with kara, and i couldn't be happier than i am with kara. there are no regrets. the sixth anniversary of our first date is coming up - february 1.

i do feel, however, that i have lost my thread. oh yes, seattle and paul auster. paul is speaking at 7:30 pm at benaroya. we've been to benaroya several times, seeing an assortment of folks including dwight yoakam, j m coetzee (i like his writing, though he was rather a poor speaker), david mamet (who was really good), and sweet honey in the rock. and tomorrow, mr auster. i'm so looking forward to it.

plus of course we just love seattle. tacoma's fine, you know, and i do like living here, but's it's no seattle. one day we'll be able to afford to buy a house in seattle. kara's got to get into school and get her masters degree going on and i have to work my current job (it's so cool that i like my job and don't pine for another) and get better and faster. maybe, then, a move to seattle.

but we're going, for a visit, today! coming back tuesday the 24th. a wee vacation.

we'll return to seattle in april to see david sedaris and again in may to see ira glass. those should be good shows too. ira came here to tacoma (!) a few months ago and we saw him and he was great. seattle's in our future!

of a friday

tired & a bit grouchy today. on my day off even! i sat a while in a coffeeshop this morning reading my novella but that didn't cheer me up. i tugged on a hangnail on my right index finger yesterday and the results were, although not unforseeable, markedly less than ideal (photo not attached). it's a form of self-mutilation that i really ought to overcome. i'm tired, maybe, because i got up between 4 and 4:30 a.m. the last four days and crept into the garage and worked out before heading to the job. i feel good about having done that, but maybe the lost sleep is getting to me. i can't sleep in on weekends. when i wake up i have to get up. i'm not much for lounging in bed in the mornings.

30s & 40s

i finished the philip roth book the other day. i don't want to spoil anything for anyone out there who hasn't yet read it and thinks she or he might one day, but in my opinion the ending was a little bit anticlimactic. in a sense, i think mr roth took the easy way out. on the whole, nonetheless, a tremendous book, very worthwhile, and of course splendidly written. especially groovy was the fact that the last few dozen pages of the book consisted of bona fide (i assume) honest-to-goddamn factual timelines so that those folks like myself who aren't as well-versed in world events of the 1930s and 1940s as we might be can catch up a bit, and see where my buddy phil took his liberties in this novel.

then i picked up raymond chandler's "the big sleep," originally published in 1939. i've seen the film (made in 1946 unless i miss my guess) several times. rather a good film. zippy dialogue, clever. this is my first time reading chandler, though; i'm having a good time envisioning the scenes from the film as i read the scenes in the book. much of the dialogue in the book (so far) was also used in the film.

i am reminded of when i read michael chabon's "wonder boys" after having seeing the film several times. i think the film is excellent in spite of michael douglas. reading the book, as i did last spring or summer i think it was, i felt like i was watching an extended director's cut of the film i've seen. and maybe it's on the pathetic side that i think in those terms. but it's true that the film followed the book so closely but there were a few scenes omitted.

generally i like reading the book first. i haven't read "to kill a mockingbird" yet and i really need to do that. that's a good film. i love greg.

speaking of actors, i heard a rumor the other day that the actor josh lucas (who has been growing on me in the last year or two, though no way am i going to see "sweet home alabama") is the son of a tacoma general emergency department physician, one dr donald maurer. how does one confirm these things?

josh is one month younger than i am. kara's birthday is monday. we're in our 30s and 40s.

eliot ablaze, and a needle

crap! something terrifying just happened! i was about to write a little bit and i have a candle burning here on my desk. eliot jumped up here (to be with me) such that his chest was immediately above the flame. his chest fur ignited!

it was only for a second; eliot jumped down and the fire was extinguished. gosh but what a stink of singed fur. foul. i went and caught him; he hissed at me when i grabbed him but then he let me hold him and inspect the affected area.

it's probably a good thing the boy has so dang much fur. i don't think his skin was burned at all. it's difficult to tell for certain, but he seems okay. what a freaky occurence, though.

it still kind of stinks in here. poor eliot. i won't soon forget the look of surprise and confusion on his face when he lit up. hee. terrible; i'm sorry.

okay. let's calm down a moment. take a deep knee bend.

prior to the fire, i was getting ready to report on wee perk of my job: today i was transcribing a procedure note this afternoon for a transforaminal epidural injection. it was a brief note: the patient was brought to the operating room and placed on the table. the area of his back to be injected was cleansed and anesthetized. the needle was inserted. stuff was injected. the needle was repositioned and more stuff was injected.

the doctor then said the two sentences that bring almost all surgical reports to a close: "the patient tolerated the procedure well. he was brought to the recovery room in stable condition."

then i could hear the doctor sit back in his chair, away from the phone into which he was dictating, and speak to the patient; distantly, he said, "is there any change in your pain with this anesthesia?" gruffly, and also distantly, i could hear the patient say, "not really." the doctor came back to the phone and said, "there was no obvious change in his pain in the anesthetic phase," and then he signed off. maybe i'm goofy; maybe it's transcriptionist humor, but i thought it was hilarious.

we call her rumble fish

what can one say about rumble? rumble is my girl. i named her rumble because as a wee kitten she had a monster purr and she used it a lot.

when i got her from the pound in seattle in 1999 she had the sniffles. then her right eye started looking really funky. eventually it appeared sunken, as if all the fluid had drained from it. it was gross. then it filled up again all on its own and to this day it seems relatively fine. there's still frequent drainage and i don't know if she can see from it; there's a scar on her cornea.

then she started putting on the weight. it must have been all those bacon cheeseburgers i was feeding her; who knew? kara and i can hear her stomping through the house; so her name has become fitting for another reason.

she does still purr. she's a terrifically sweet cat. very kind, very unassuming.

she has some kind of oral complex; i guess a lot of cats do. when i pet her she likes to be eating something. when she's eating she likes to be petted. she's hungry a lot.

she's so fat, though, she has trouble cleaning herself, so she's kind of a dirty cat. i brush her fairly often; she sometimes likes being brushed and sometimes she's not in the mood.

but she's a damn fine cat. she bothers no one. she looks to me for her lovin'. she's my rumble fish.

to abandon a goal

i have a conundrum. i'm wondering today whether to follow my writing goal for this year as previously described or to abandon that goal and focus my efforts on making publishable the novella i wrote last november. i don't think i can do both. i'm not that sort of multitasker. one project at a time.

i think the goal of writing new stuff may be a cop out. it's almost easier to do that, and maybe more fun. it's nice to have written something and be done with it, or done enough for now; and it's hard to work more on something i've put aside and considered finished. so, poo.

this wouldn't have happened, i wouldn't be having this internal (now external) debate, were it not for my parents. should i never have given them a copy of the story for christmas? damn the holidays! damn my own good nature!

i have genuine published-writer (sort of) friends in seattle and the parents recommend contacting them, etc.; and maybe they're right.

even when i was doing a lot of writing, i've never really taken the next step. there are stories i've worked over and worked over, perhaps to the point of obsession, but never to the point of really readying them for publication. publication was always a pipe dream.

but maybe it's time. maybe i'll spend at least this month and next reading through "nocturnal dyspnea" and doing another draft. adding another 20,000 words or so. oh boy. this is much scarier than writing a new story each month.

knismogenic

knismogenic. causing a tickling sensation. the word blatantly calls out for application in a haiku, does it not?


wife's gentle fingers
creeping toward my axilla
oh! knismogenic!


okay that was piss poor. myriad apologies. who can do better? the challenge is on! the gauntlet is thrown!

un deux trois

numere uno, many thanks indeed and a hearty shout-out to christa for plugging my blastocyte of a blog. i suppose it really has been 10 years (holy crap) since i met christa while we were both working for visart video in chapel hill, nc. maybe 12? she was a great friend to me and though since i moved away (to virginia [asinine move, blue], and then to the pacific northwest [much better]) our communications have been somewhat scattered, in the last several weeks we have reestablished semiregular contact. i am better off for it. plus she's helped me a lot with technical aspect of blogging. thanks, christa; it's great having you in my life, even transcontinentally.

el numero dos, i thought i'd share the fact that in november 2005 i took part in national novel writing month's writing marathon, and completed a (draft of a) 50,000-word novel between november 1 and november 30. i wrote a story about a man in his late 20s who works the graveyard shift in a hospital's medical records department (which i actually used to do, though not in my late 20s) and who has a fascination with visiting corpses in the hospital morgue. hilarities ensue, as they are wont to do. it was quite an experience, writing this story. kara was tremendously supportive of my efforts.

i wrote a lot in high school & college, poems and short stories, but it's really been years (since before i met christa!) since i could with any honesty consider myself a writer. (the story christa links in her blog is one i wrote senior year of college.) a story here, a poem there, but nothing to speak of. so it was great to feel like i was back.

i gave a copy of the story to my parents for christmas, because mom sometimes nudges me gently about my writing. they read the story (it's called "nocturnal dyspnea") and they say they liked it! (mom seemed to like the fact that it went easy on the violence & kinky sex.) i got emails from them this morning. (they live on the east coast.) it pleased me more than i thought it would to hear such positive things from them about my writing. parents; you know how it is.

anyway. i wrote the thing so dang fast in november, without much looking back and reading what i had written, and i haven't read the thing soup to nuts yet. (kara is slowly working her way through it; she's reading three or so other books at the same time.) but now i'm thinking, because of their emails, i should pore through it and rework it and find a publisher!

that's a dream, of course. (or is it?) but since that month-long experience, i have set a 2006 goal for myself. i'm not calling it a resolution. but the goal is to write a short story a month every month this year except for december, and do the 50,000-word marathon again in november. then i'll have 10 short stories and a novella and that makes up a book.

and then i'll see where i am. so far, though, my january story has been a dud. yesterday i allowed myself to scratch what i had written and start anew, because it was painfully derivative of, of all things, "fight club" (i haven't read it but i've seen the film). so, i admit, not an auspicious start. but my hopes do remain high.

y numera tres, my supervisor at my job is retiring, as of tomorrow. she does the qa and the training and she's leaving. thus far she has not been replaced. it will probably be weeks before someone else sits in her desk. so when i go back to work monday it'll be just me and one other transcriptionist in the little room. how strange it will be.

(i'll go into the little room/big room issue of the transcription department at a later date, maybe. maybe i won't, though, and let you all wonder. it's not really critical information for you to have. not like the rest of this stuff i'm typing.)

sense of hearing

listen up. this is what i do for a living. i sit at a computer and i wear headphones. i listen to doctors dictate medical reports and i type what they say, within reason. it's a pretty sweet gig, especially after years upon years of retail customer service. i'm still a total freak for books, but i do not for a minute miss the book retail industry. (well, maybe just for a minute.) it's wonderful to not have to talk to people, especially the general public. yeesh.

emergency room visits are sometimes the most interesting reports to transcribe but too often they're dull. i must have transcribed 5 reports of children with otitis media today, and another 5 kids had upper respiratory infections. it can get old. although, a couple weeks ago i typed up two reports in as many days of young men who do heavy industrial work and who dropped heavy drills on a foot and essentially destroyed it. phrases like "crush injury," "traumatic amputation," and "hanging by a tendon" and words like "avulsed" and "degloved" are spoken into my ears and my stomach churns and i quiver with a macabre glee.

it was odd that two people had the same terrible thing happen to them, and odd too that i got both reports to type. im' not the only transcriptionist working there, and what reports i get is the luck of the draw.

apparently, the human body can take only so much. i could not at all cope with working in the actual emergency department and see these things with my own eyes. i would never stop throwing up. and i would be endlessly annoyed by people who come to the er with something as banal as a sore throat. it's bad enough having to type those wastrels' reports without having to interact with them. i've had it up to here with interaction.

i like doing discharge summaries, because i get to see the entire picture of a patient's visit in the hospital. death summaries do produce a strange thrill. echocardiograms are quick and easy. but surgeries are my favorite. orthopedic surgeries are interesting but challenging because a lot of instrumentation is used and sometimes it's hard to find the names of all the pins and plates and screws and whatnot. sometimes i like doing an eye surgery, like the repair of a detached retina.

abdominal and thoracic surgeries are the best. c-sections, appendectomies, hiatal hernia repairs. i think i like them because i feel like i can visualize well what's going on. today i typed up a breast reconstruction report. (plastic surgeries are fun too.) the patient in question had breast cancer and was status post a partial mastectomy. there was a term the surgeon used with which i was unfamiliar (that never happens - just kidding!) and i used the internet to see what i could learn. the term had to do with a type of flap graft.

another perk of the job is that not at all infrequently i accidentally come across a website that wasn't even at all what i was looking for but is fascinating or horrific and worth pursuing later. i love learning this stuff. anyway, i found out about the type of graft and i went on with my typing.

a big part of my job is editing. this aspect will only grow as voice-recognition software, now in its infancy, well, grows up. i don't really mind that, i don't think. i like editing. of course, physicians aren't necessarily terribly knowledgable about grammar. they are frequently redundant. they frequently contradict themselves. it's up to me to make sense of the gibberish coming out of their mouths and produce an intelligible medical report.

i'm not even going to talk about the challenge of mumblers and fast talkers. yeesh.

myxopoiesis

myxopoiesis means mucus production. i totally dig medical language. i have an urge to insinuate these words into everyday conversation as well as into my writing. why should doctors (and transcriptionists) have all the fun?

philip

this here is the book i'm reading now. mr roth is among my favorite authors; "the human stain" was such an amazing book. (the film was only okay; anthony hopkins was good, but kara thinks nicole kidman was woefully miscast, and i don't disagree, though i quite like ed harris and gary sinise.)

i wasn't that keen on "american pastoral," but maybe that's just me. the writing was wonderful but the story didn't grab me. he's also got a novel called "the breast," which i think is about a person who turns into an enormous breast, and i'm perhaps a bit skeptical about that. sort of a sexist take on kafka's "metaphorphosis"? i haven't read it but i have a copy around here somewhere. i'll probably try it out one of these days.

but this here book, "the plot against america," if you don't know, is a what-if yarn. what if charles lindbergh had run for president against fdr in 1940 and won? he runs on the platform of vote for lindbergh or vote for war, as fdr is leaning toward sending american troops to europe to stem the swelling nazi tide. after young and handsome lindbergh wins, on his campaign of peace, he visits with hitler and others and signs treaties and becomes something of an honorary nazi himself. this is just the backdrop. the story focuses on a working-class jewish family in a newark neighborhood who by and large are appalled by lindbergh and the direction this country is taking. i can't help but relate what i'm reading here to the current political situation, as far as liberties being taken by those in power, etc. (though it's entirely possible i'm looking too hard for correlations). the subtle ways in which the government subtly but systematically appears to be destroying the jewish population in america are a horrorshow. it's a terrific and terrifying story. and dang, but that philip roth can write! he is very, very good.

highly recommended. i'm just over halfway through this book, and i'm extremely impressed.

puppy puppy?

don't you hate those pet owners who can't stop talking about their animals, who seem to have nothing else in their lives but their animals?

well perhaps i can be accused of appearing to be that. but the animals pictured here aren't the animals whose virtues i usually extol. this is sagan (in the chair) and max. they are dogs. i don't particularly care for dogs. they're kara's pets and i am a nice person for putting up with them.

sagan is a corgi-weimaraner mix, which is a little peculiar if you stop and think. she's something like three years old. she's pretty smart; i'll give her that. another good quality she possesses is this: if she stops moving for more than five minutes, she falls asleep. and she snores. she snores like there's something critically wrong with her pulmonary system, though there isn't.

max is an australian shepherd. he's 14 or so. he once was a very smart dog, as i understand most herding dogs are, but now his mind is pretty much gone. kara's had him from birth (his, not hers) or so; he traveled around the country with her when she went on her year-long road trip. he's never really cared for me. kara and i have been together six years and i'm still the interloper. the only reason he doesn't still bark at me whenever i come home is that he doesn't usually notice. deafness is a virtue. i recognize him as a good dog though, as dogs go.

so these are they. the dogs in my life. max sometimes seems to be hanging onto life with his overlong claws and sometimes he seems almost lucid. he could well be with us for a while. kara assures me, however, that when he does go, we will be getting another dog.

and the plan is to name him or her steve. we read somewhere that the majority of scientists, i don't remember if it was physicists or biologists or scientists in general, are named stephen or steve or stephanie. a statistical anomaly, perhaps, but we'll be taking advantage of it.

look at this little man

this is eliot!

he's like a small bear or a wee wookie. he's really a cat. and a bit of a thug.

he has an abnormal amount of fur these days; we shave him fairly regularly because he's longhaired and he gets nasty mats about his bum area. after the last shave his hair grew back like gangbusters. now he has mats behind his ears. and everywhere.

he has an aversion to cameras; this shot was taken under exteme duress. he don't like paparazzi either.

we have two other cats and two dogs, and images of them will be forthcoming.

plumb dumb

so i just got off the phone with the plumber. it seems no one needs to come to the house to do the estimate. we want the bathroom sink in this house switched with the bathroom sink in our old house, and it's going to be $150 an hour and likely 3 hours' work. because none of the parts are coming from the plumber, there will be no warranty on anything. not that we're big freaks for warranties. so, then $450 plus tax. how badly do we want the sinks switched? i'm going to have to go back to the old house and look at that sink again. and we'll get other estimates of course.

so my day lies ahead of me now. kara just left for work. i'm about 1000 words behind on the story i'm writing, so i need to get cranking on that. there are errands that need to be accomplished. i'll probably get going on those too. i need to get in the garage and hop on that bike for a while too.

i want to figure out my new digital camera so i can start posting photos here. all this is so new!

plans & dreams

okay then. i am before the keyboard with coffee and bailey's. the pop tarts have been consumed. i could use a stick of gum but i don't have any upstairs. in an hour or two a plumber will come.the sink in the bathroom of our old house is nicer than the sink in the bathroom of our new house and we're getting our first estimate on a switcheroo. i am something like 1000 words behind on my story so i definitely have to get cracking on that. a goal for the weekend, aside from driving north of seattle to check out the status of kara's trailer, is to figure out my new digital camera so i can put photos on this here blog. i dreamed this morning of taking pictures of my cats. much more pleasant than my dream last night of getting shot at. and not less pleasant, just different, from my dream two nights ago of meeting maggie and jake gyllenhaal and being offered a role on a soap opera for monstrous cash. such isn't my life. i only have something like four more 3-day weekends left before my job goes full-time, which is bad and good; though actually one of those weekends will really be five days because for her birthday kara and i are going to seattle to spend a few nights and see paul auster. we like paul auster! and seattle!

this being axb

wondrous things await those what read this blog.
no foolin.
but just at the moment i have cat poo that needs disposed of.