Thursday, July 07, 2011

i might take you home with me if i could tonight

Today was one of those days that makes me wonder how I lived when I had to be at the office for 9-12 hours/day - how did I get anything done for my real life? I know that I must have, since I didn't starve to death, or have oozing sores from living in filth, or end up in jail, or anything similarly dire. And yet errands took up a lot of my day - enough to cut into the writing time, but not enough that I wasn't able to squeeze in a few pages this afternoon.

I made it down to the glorious south bay in time to train with Alyssa. I hadn't seen her in a couple of weeks, so it was good to catch up, and while my trip to NYC was by no means a healthy voyage, I didn't seem to experience any backslide in terms of my fitness levels. I'm working out with her again tomorrow and next week before going to Germany, and then I'll have to hit the gym in earnest once I get back from Germany if I'm going to justify driving down to see her multiple times per week.

After the gym, I went to Joanie's Cafe - it's probably the last time I'll eat at that incarnation of Joanie's, since they're moving down the block next week. So, I said a fond farewell over a cobb salad while writing some ideas about the gargoyle series, and I'm eager to see what they do with their new space. After Joanie's, I went to the bank, dropped off my dry cleaning, took the combined mass of me and Terry's moving boxes to the recycling center, and drove to the Comcast office in Foster City to return my cable equipment from the old place before they charged me millions of dollars. Then, I drove back to Palo Alto and went to Stanford library, where I wrote approximately six pages over the span of a couple of hours.

I wasn't writing Ellie's story, though; I started a new Scrivener project and began writing the first gargoyle book. This book is speaking to me in a way that Ellie and Nick currently aren't -- it seems that everywhere I go, I'm daydreaming of the gargoyle series (which still has nothing to do with gargoyles, fyi), and ideas are just slamming through me and forcing me to stop periodically and write things down so that I don't lose all those great ideas. It's a very odd experience, living with a whole world and set of characters inside your head, and I can't really explain what it feels like, other than to say that I have to write this book or go crazy trying.

But, I took a break from being crazy to have a long dinner with Heather (aka dear respected madam) at The Counter. We discussed work gossip, books, life, children (why is everyone talking about babies these days? isn't turning thirty punishment enough?), etc., and I'm glad that I got to see her between New York and Germany. After dinner, I drove back to the evil city, watched a bit of South Park with Terry, and am now going to go to bed relatively early. It's a shame that I'm getting readjusted to Pacific time when I'm about to go back east (and even farther east than I was before), but c'est la vie. Goodnight!

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