Tuesday, July 10, 2012

before you came into my life i missed you so bad

Today was v., v. writerly - if you think I'm a strange combination of Ernest Hemingway and a cougar. I slept late, which seems impossible since the fire alarm between me and Terry's rooms was apparently chirping since five a.m., but my ability to sleep is legendary. So when I finally rolled out of bed at an embarrassing hour, I checked my email, took care of some writerly tings, and then went to Safeway to buy a new battery for the alarm and some groceries for my tummy. I also went to Philz on Van Ness, since I was run out of the Philz in Palo Alto by an overly-chatty barista (I mean, I would go back there, I just can't anticipate getting any work done) and got a coffee + a pound of coffee beans to sustain myself through the next round of fierce writing/edits.

When I got home, I changed the battery (successfully, albeit semi-deafeningly), trimmed my bangs, showered, and took care of some more writerly tings. Then I took a taxi (because I am such a princess) to a cafe, where I met up with my co-teacher for this class I'm teaching at Berkeley so that we could plan the next two lessons. That mission accomplished, I took a bus (because I like to find out how the masses live - and they live crazily, judging by the guy who was ranting loudly to himself for fifteen blocks or so) up Fillmore and spent a couple of hours at the Grove, where I nursed a diet coke and wrote a few pages of Ellie and Nick's book. This is a crucial scene where he's an asshole (don't women love assholes? sales records would say yes), and since I'm about as conflict-avoidant as a person can be without being a total doormat, it's kind of tough for me to write this. But it's going okay (knock on wood), so I'm glad I made some progress.

Post Grove, I met up with Terry and Lauren (aka Subz) for an early dinner at Dosa, where I had two cocktails (remember my vow never to drink again? me neither) and some curry, and we caught up on all the many things that have happened to us since we saw each other twenty-four hours ago (answer: nothing). Then we went across the street and saw "Magic Mike", which I was required by all the laws of romance writerdom to see or else I would be kicked out of the sisterhood and forced to go write inspirational Christian romance instead. And I must say, I wish there had been more stripping and less tawdry drug-centered secondary plot. And I must also say, I wasted far too much of my youth trying to pause a VHS tape of "A Time To Kill" on exactly the moment when Matthew McConaughey sits down on the remnants of his blown-up front porch and trying to verify whether there was a hole in the crotch of his jeans, since he shows almost all the goods in HD up on the big screen in this one. My, how far I've come from my sad and misspent youth.

sssanyway, the movie was entertaining, even if I roll my eyes at all the women acting like innocent little girls, shrieking and blushing over things like "Magic Mike" and "50 Shades of Grey" - while some part of me is pleased that we may be reaching a cultural turning point and starting to objectify men (yum), there's another part of me that feels like this is all just a little ridiculous.

sssanyway again, we had fun, and now I should go to sleep and pray that I wake up sans hangover so that I can finish this scene and send the first third of the book off to my editor. Wish me luck (parenthetically, if you desire - apparently parentheses exceed even my love for the beloved em-dash tonight) - goodnight!

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