“How come all my clocks are broken?” That’s a good question if I ever heard one, and I’ve heard my share of questions. I almost went through the day without writing. It’s evening now and I sat down with Doolies on the couch to write. She’s reading her fantasy novel. Besides video games, I addicted her to fantasy novels. She goes through stages where she doesn’t read, but with the vacations coming up in a week, she’ll get a lot of reading done. We’re heading to Taiwan next Friday. I’m excited to visit, if not the flight. When I went to the airport to pick up Doolies, I remembered how much I hated to fly. There’s something depressing about sitting in a closed box for hours and hours with nothing to do but read and watch TV and write. I guess when I put it that way, it doesn’t sound too bad, especially with Doolies sitting next to me to keep me calm and stop me from going crazy.

I liked the story I wrote yesterday. It’s raw and needs an ending and a middle, and probably a point, but the writing style was fun. I forced the short sentences more than the Brooklyn accent in the flying toe stomp. I liked that story as well, but I don’t think I did as good of a job editing it as I would have liked. The sheer size of it made it difficult for me to get my hands around it. While I liked the individual bits, I felt I missed on the story. I built up nothing, there was little conflict (outside the obvious one) and it didn’t end. The ending was more because I grew lazy than I couldn’t think of a way of ending it. I’m usually good at endings. When I get to it, the words come easier and I draw everything together. I failed on that one. I ended it in the middle of a thought and didn’t resolve anything. More for the next draft, I guess.

I didn’t mean to sit down and complain today. I’m having a good day. I posted new pictures of Doolies and my stroll around the park, which names my community. It was a beautiful sunny, if slightly cold, day. I nice relief from the rainy weather we’ve been having over the last week. I’m still adapting Doolies to the cold. I told her today that I’m conditioning her, as you do with new fish you bring home before adding them to the aquarium. If you dropped the fish in the tank, the shock of the different temperatures may kill them. Instead, you put the bag in the water, and let the water temperature in the bag equalize with the tank over a half hour. I’m doing the same thing with Doolies. I’m giving her small tastes of Seattle’s weather to condition her for the big plop, which is now a little more than a year away. Sucker.

I have a nice fire going and the candles burning. It’s a nice relaxing Saturday night. We ate bad sushi tonight. We’ve only been to one decent restaurant in Seattle. The other ones are good—better than Houston at least—but nothing to write home, brag, dance in the streets, etc. Man, my analogies or is that a syllogism or some other part of English that I know nothing about, are bad tonight.

I’m afraid I’m going to call it quits early tonight. It was nice to see Chuck post something again. He’s been a bit of a funk since Nanowrimo (while he pretends to be busy, we all know the truth). That’s what you get for writing something brilliant. Me, I didn’t write anything brilliant, so I don't have to worry about the after effects. Now I have to find inspiration. I’ll search tomorrow.