Sunday, August 24, 2008

i wear my sunglasses at night

I am actually wearing sunglasses -- to be specific, my prescription sunglasses, which I wore once on my way home to Iowa last spring before deciding that they were improperly calibrated. I'm giving them another try -- the problem may not be the calibration, but rather the fact that they are huge compared to my regular glasses, and I'm not used to wearing glasses that cover my entire field of vision.

After that incredibly interesting story, it's time to switch to the even more interesting subject of what I did today. I was actually surprisingly productive; I woke up before eight a.m. (shocking) with the strong desire to work on my book. I didn't actually get around to leaving the apartment until after ten, but then I sat at a cafe for almost three hours and edited a couple of chapters. I've decided that I need to just ignore the first two chapters for now; I'm putting too much pressure on myself with them because if I convince an agent to look at my work, they will just request the first three chapters, and if I fail with those, they won't ask for the rest of the manuscript or offer representation. And once I get past the first two chapters, I love a lot of what I've written, so that's good.

When I looked at the clock on my computer, I realized it was 1pm, which was the starting time for the barbecue I was supposed to go to in Emeryville. So I hauled myself back to my apartment, switched into a cute halter-style ankle-length sundress that I've been wanting to wear all summer, and drove over the bay bridge to the hated east bay. As usual, the hated east bay was quite lovely; it was warmer than it was in San Francisco this afternoon, and the barbecue was at the marina, which is awesome. John and Jess were hosting; they've been in LA for the summer and this was John's first official weekend back (although he was back the night of my Olympics party, resulting in a food-coloring mustache for him and a hangover for me), so it was good to catch up. We hung out for a couple of hours, enjoyed some excellent grilled sausages and a delicious homemade peach pie, and generally had a good ol' time. On the way back to SF, I had my weekly conversation with my parents; I'm trying to convince them to come and visit me, although they will be less than excited about the homeless people and the tranny hookers that they may see if we venture into the Tenderloin.

I spent the rest of the day generally organizing. I did four loads of laundry, washed up the remaining dishes from last night (and ate some of the vegetarian chili -- it turned out fantastically), and finally got around to fully setting up my desk. Now I have all of my favorite little desk toys out and about, my office supplies are organized, my inks and fountain pens are ready for use, and my Hello Kitty calculator is prominently displayed for any simple math that I may need to do in the future. The next step is to get a big bulletin board for hanging up various photos, news snippets, souvenirs, maps, and other things that will help to inspire my books, but that can wait a few days.

So in general, I'm pretty happy. Although I'm sad to report that I didn't even watch the Closing Ceremonies tonight. Part of that is because I don't quite want to acknowledge that the Olympics are over; part is because I was intent on making progress while I felt like doing something useful; and part is because I am itching to get into a non-Olympics routine. However, I tivo'd the ceremonies, so I'll likely watching them sometime in the next couple of days. Then I'll start my countdown to Vancouver, which is v. exciting!

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