close your eyes, clear your heart -- cut the cord

I went to work and successfully slogged all day, enlivened all too briefly with a bowl of the spiciest chicken tortilla soup that I have ever had the pleasure/misfortune of eating. My company is on an even bigger kick of environmental awareness than usual. A couple of weeks ago they had people standing at the tray return areas to teach us how to compost (which involves separating out foods from non-biodegradable products, and we have to do it correctly or else the company can't do composting anymore if our compost supplies are too contaminated). Then today I discovered that they have done away with to-go boxes (which were compostable anyway) and plastic to-go cups (also compostable, since they were made of some sort of corn product). This means two things: 1) it's much harder for me to get food to go from my favorite cafe in the building next door, and 2) I can't take a cup of Diet Coke with me when I leave at night unless I take a reusable glass and bring it back the next day. Some might argue that it also means 3) I'm spoiled, but I refuse to acknowledge that.

When I got home, I ate a pizza, procrastinated for a bit, made a pot of tea (Russian Caravan looseleaf from Peet's -- smoky and delicious) -- and then wrote for an hour and a half. I churned out 1800 words, which is about seven and a half pages, bringing my total for Ferguson and Madeleine's story up to 13,256 words, which is 62 page. At this rate, I could be 25% of the way through the book by the end of this weekend, provided that I don't get wrecked on port or sucked into watching the Super Bowl.

I really want to keep going, but I'm going to go to bed instead -- I have grand plans to get up early tomorrow and go to the gym, which is unlikely at best, but I should at least make it theoretically possible. I also may have to take a break from the book tomorrow to start the assignment for my Stanford class. It hurts to take time away from the book to write something else -- but I think the class will be really good for my romance novel writing even if it's meant for much more high-falutin' types of books. But before I can get back to writing, I have to slog for nine hours tomorrow, so I think it's time for bed!