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Wednesday, 20 April 2011 (because you stood still) 9:42am Worked on a spec article until half past five yesterday afternoon, then picked up Marta from West Portal and returned to the Black Light District. How I Met Your Mother, Easy A, Better Off Ted, and then crashing. Bootcamp this morning was sweaty and brutal as always, and I didn't quite master doing a handstand push-up against the wall, but at least I was able to maintain a plank position for a few seconds at a time. With my feet about a meter and a half up the wall. So that's not bad for the first time, I think. Even better, Damiel is back! He said he's looking forward to seeing me at his revived abs class on Monday, so I guess I'm going to start hitting the gym on Mondays again. What the hell, going back to five days a week isn't a bad thing, especially considering that I haven't been doing much abs work this year. And it might be necessary to finally get back down to the weight on my drivers license. (Not that I care about the numbers or even about looking "good," because that would imply that I'm brainwashed by the patriarchical's media standards, and I'm most certainly not.) Dropped Marta off at work, and now I'm at Green House at My Desk. Going to another spec article—well, not spec exactly since I will get paid for them, but it feels kinda spec due to a lack of direct direction. Like all children, I crave structure. 2:34pm Ugh. Just cannot focus on my work-work. I might just go home earlier than usual. The Black Light District is in need of a serious cleaning, so that counts as productivity. 3:15pm Buy the ticket, take the trip. And the ticket for the Fox Hunt has been bought. 3:55pm Heading Missionward. Marta is in the midst of an existential crisis right now (mostly due to uncertainty about work and housing and life) and needs company. 8:11pm We hung out for a while at Marta's place, hit Fabric Outlet again, had dinner at El Majahual, and then I walked her to the Women's Building for a film screening which I bowed out of, since I'm a bad girlfriend. (My words, not hers.) | ||
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Tuesday, 19 April 2011 (sleep at the bottom) 9:33am Not my best gym morning. Neither Rita nor Yvette were there, and the spin class was a bit of a bust. Alas. I'm sure bootcamp will more than make up for it tomorrow morning. At Green House at My Desk, because this is where I work. I don't have a new assignment from the marketing guy just yet, largely because I chose not follow up with him about it yesterday so I could focus on Landing on Water. But the rent, it must be paid, and the cat food, it must be bought. 12:22pm He's being a little opaque on the subject of my next assignments. At the very least, it sounds like I'll have to do a lot of subject-pitching, which I kinda hate doing. I suppose that's the life of a hack, of which I am one. Meanwhile, My Agent says that a particular editor is still reading Bottomfeeder. It's a publisher that already rejected it once, but a different editor, one who does will with memoirs. So. And, of course, if they want to market it as fiction, that's cool, too. | ||
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Monday, 18 April 2011 (shots & ladders) 8:31am At Green House at My Desk. My immediate goal is to finish up my work-work queue, and then get the next chapter of Landing on Water rewritten and sent off to my agent. I'm also doing a manuscript exchange with my fellow Unthologist Sarah Jane Dobbs, whose story is right after mine in Unthology No. 1. I'm reading the current draft of her new manuscript, and she's reading Bottomfeeder. t's nice to finally be networking with other writers, since I haven't really done so in years. 9:14am Oh, goddamnit, Connelly. Not again. I can't really know where some boundaries are until I cross them, but still. 3:35pm Okay, I'm going to be here until four, and then I'm calling it a day, because eight hours is plenty. 4:15pm Or five. Five is a good time to leave. And I might have these rewrites done by then. 5:42pm Nope, not five, either. 6:11pm Home now. Dinner, then back to work on the manuscript. 8:08pm ...but if i don't watch the pot, how will i know it's boiling? 8:34pm Okay, this chapter's at 9,944 words, and it's not quite done yet. I think that means it's actually more than one chapter. 10:25pm Okay, sent off the new chapter(s) to My Agent. It's actually material which I'd long since excised, but now it's back in, because I think it may actually be where the story lies. Now sleep, or something. | ||
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Sunday, 17 April 2011 (i've told you this before, i can't say it anymore) 2:11pm Green House is open, and I have My Desk. There's no band today, but I'd be ready for them if there were. In spite of Ilene's fatigue from a cold and my own thorough lack of bearings, we had a good time last night. Not only did we take the long way around from her office to where I'd parked Phoebe, after we moved her closer to Divas, it somehow slipped my mind that Miller's East Coast Deli (which we last ate at together a million years ago) is on Polk, not Van Ness. By the time I realized my mistake we'd overshot it by a few blocks anyway, and when we finally arrived it was nearly closed and they were no longer seating new customers. Whoops. Ilene—who really didn't have the energy to walk as much as I'd just made her walk—managed to keep her shit together remarkably well as I hailed a taxi, which dropped us off at the e'er-reliable and late-open Kyoto Sushi. It was a bit more crowded and raucuous than I'm accustomed to, full of hip kids on their way to doing hip things, including a young goth girl who reminded me of Anodyne (though Ilene didn't quite see the resemblence). As I'd promised her, Divas did not disappoint for spectacle on this particular evening. The music and the dance floor itself on the third floor met with her approval for future excursions, though we spent most of our time cuddling on the couches strategically placed throughout the building, finally ending up on the third floor near the elevator after being chased from the fourth floor by way too much reggae music, drinking whiskey sours (the bartender didn't know what an old-fashioned is, as most bartenders probably don't anymore) and making out in a germ-conscious way and generally getting caught up from what's been a rather dramatic week in some ways. But it was good, and we're good. 10:41pm Well, that was one of the most underattended Bad Movie Nights in recent memory. Judging from Twitter and Facebook, our audience chose to stay home and watch Game of Thrones rather than come to The Dark Room to see Scream Blacula Scream. You win some, you lose some. | ||
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Saturday, 16 April 2011 (as we stumble to the shore) 1:37pm The first of my four estimated tax payments for 2011 has been made. This is one of those things, much like the lack of health insurance, that really makes me miss having an actual salaried office job. Alas. 6:53pm Roughie Night went well. It was the core group of Marta and I, Davina and Mouse (duh, being their house), Liam and Daisy, and Ilene. Porter was unable to make it, unfortunately, but it worked out nicely all the same as a group cuddle of Marta and Ilene and I on the couch, Marta wasting no time in stretching out across me and putting her feet in Ilene's lap. And Davina's return to health was complete, with an enthusiastic hello and goodbye kiss, and occasional bits of snuggling throughout the evening, all initiated by her and happily accepted by me. (It relieved some uncertainties I'd been feeling about where I stand with her and Mouse, and I am never more grateful than when the girl initiates affection.) We gave Ilene a ride home afterward, then returned to the Black Light Distrct and promptly crashed. Sex this morning was followed by more sleeping, not actally getting out of bed until noon, but it was absolutely necessary, and I almost feel human again. After eating and getting caught up on our Thursday night shows, Marta and I drove into the Mission and did some shopping, at Community Thrift and Fabric Outlet, the latter so Marta could start constructing a hood with bunny ears for the Fox Hunt next month. Still not sure what I'm going to be doing for it outfit-wise, though I did find a black and gray marabou boa which I expect is going to work even better as a tail than the blue and white scarf I've been using, plus it gives me a better sense of direction overall. Start with the tail, and work from there. The color is more or less the same the material Marta bought for her hood, not to mention it strongly resembles Ilene's raccoon palette, but that's fine by me. I like the idea of us being of a piece. It was pushing six, and Marta needed to go home. Since I wasn't going to pick up Ilene until eight I considered just finding a table at one of Valencia's cafes and writing for a while, but decided instead to go into Japantown (close to Ilene's office as it is to Marta's shrink) and write at the Cinema Cafe in New People Mall until Ilene got off work. Yeah. Whoops. Forgot about the still-going-on Cherry Blossom Festival, and though I miraculously found parking, and the Cinema Cafe is currently being used for merchants. I've managed to secure a table in the Japantown Mall proper outside Cafe Hana, which is not ideal, but nothing ever is. sometime after midnight It turns out my original conclusion was correct. First time for everything. | ||
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Friday, 15 April 2011 (remaining unconvinced) 4:50am Though I dreamed, so I know I must have slept, there's no way I got enough sleep (or enough dream). But it'll have to do. 8:24am I really wish things would stop falling apart. The center holding would be nice, too. 4:36pm I got maybe three hours of sleep last night, tops. Just could not relax. And even though there was no way I was properly rested for it, I went to Bootcamp, since I was going to be awake either way, so I might as well get some exercise. Had my usual pre-workout food of a couple of pieces of tofu and piece of toast with peanut butter, but I'm out of hard-boiled eggs. When I got back home, I made oatmeal, but only had a few bites. I just wasn't feeling hungry, for some reason. I left the house in time to get to Green House by when they opened at eight, with the intention of finishing up my work-work, queue. Standing outside when I arrived were the owners, a man and a woman and their small daughter. They looked extremely distressed and, for good reason: the front door was shatter, and the cafe had been burglarized. Oh, godsdamnit. Just figures. I talked with them for a few minutes (we finally introduced ourselves to each other), and they assured me that it would probably be open again by tomorrow, and thanked me for being a regular, which I intend to continue to be. I drove into the Mission, took forever to find free street parking, and got the corner table in the back of Mission Creek. Got a house coffee, and tried to work-work. (The marketing guy has requested that I no longer use "yoink." Ran that well dry pretty quickly, I did.) Got a little done, but I just could not keep my eyes open to save my life. Actually, it wasn't so much not being able to keep them open as them constantly shutting on their own, like I was in a duststorm or something. Maybe my eyes were rejecting my makeup? I cleaned it off as best as I could, but no, that wasn't it. Even when I walked to Marta's place at one, my eyes kept squeezing shut. I suggested we nap for a couple hours, and while she was out like a light as soon as we laid down, I just could not sleep. I was brutally tired, the sleep dep kicking in much sooner than I'd expected, but I could not sleep, and when I stood up I just waned to lie down again. But we had places to be, and it finally struck me that the sleep deprivation was surely being made worse by how little I'd eaten over the past twenty-four hours. I had a big salad for dinner, but very little since then. So I suggested we split a burrito from downstairs as we walked to Phoebe. Marta warned me that she likes a lot of stuff in her burritos that I don't generally eat, like sour cream and stuff, but I figured that a shot of saturdated fat would probably do me good. And I was right: I felt much better after a eating a half an Urban Food Log. It's gotta be the first one I've had in well over a year, and I don't see getting into the habit of eating them again, but damn, it hit the spot. Now I know what sleep deprviation combined with slight malnourishment and too much caffeine feels like: icky. We swung by the old NakedSword office, where Sister Edith was kindly waiting with the laptop battery which I'd had delivered there rather to the Black Light District, and then we went into Japantown, which is near her therapist's office. We walked around for a bit before her appointment, and now I'm at the Cinema Cafe in the New People Mall. Not a bad place to work at all, actually, provided one can find decent parking. I like it, though, especially since discovering that the restrooms (both on this level as well as upstairs at Black Peace Now, which of course I had to visit because someday, damnit) are equipped with Toto Washlets. I haven't quite worked out the bidet part yet, but, holy frakking shit, heated toilet seats. I am so in love. When Marta's out, we'll return to the Black Light District, have dinner, then go to Davina and Mouse's house to watch The Defilers and Scum of the Earth. Roughie Night! sometime after midnight Everything is as it should be, I think. | ||
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