I had thoughts about reading through my ping-pong story before posting. I started to do just that, grew terribly depressed, and decided to post it in its current state, replete with typos, bad grammar, plot holes the size of small planets, and senseless organization. The story is there if you squint and look at it sideways. Don’t hurt yourself, it’s not worth it. Trust me.

What I can say is that the story meets the ping-pong deadline and is sort of on topic. Chuck claims the topics are only a guideline. This time I followed it rather closely. I did some mail searching but couldn’t find the mail from Chuck with the topic. It had something to do with a guy in a room where the phone only dials out to random numbers. Or at least I think that was the topic. If I’m wrong, I wasted an awful lot of words.

Doolies and I discussed the story when Chuck first delivered the topic. We came up with the basic idea, and I let it stew for a long time before starting. It was a good stewing time as I started doodling again and drew my first big eyed, long tailed monster. When I finally got around to starting the ping-pong story (after much nagging and yanking of hair), the writing came off my fingers easily. This was very surprising. After two days of writing, the ending hit me in the shower. I added exactly five hundred story words each day, which helped me meet Goal without the need to consternate or talk too much about the weather or my equally uneventful days.

[Insert self-deprecation comment about my story writing here . . . and here] but I got where I wanted to go and I’m satisfied with that. As I said a few days ago, the writing felt like Marathon writing. I put words down and didn’t worry if they made much sense or even moved the story forward.

After thinking about it for a bit, I realized part of the improvement was the time crunch. Since Doolies returned, I have less time to fiddle around with my writings and doodles. I arrive home around six thirty, which leaves me about an hour and a half to write, doodle, clean up a doodle for posting, and post everything. That’s not much time, and because of the limited crunch, I worry less about quality and more about getting words done. My real goal, of course, is to spend quality time with the Doolies. Priorities are very important.

I’m glad I didn’t try to edit the story today. I went to the gym this afternoon and sculpted my lower body for the first time in three weeks. Isn’t that a great word: sculpted? It’s like I transformed my legs and buttocks into a David sculpture. If only that was true. While resting between exercises, I happened to slap my inner thigh. I watched it jiggle for a good thirty seconds, completely captivated by the wavy motion. Sculpted, in the “marble” sense, I certainly am not.

I won’t deliver my next ping-pong serve probably until next week. I need to recover, read Chuck’s brilliant story, and get back to my Jewish essay. I put the essay on hold while I was busy padding words. Don’t be surprised if you have to suffer through countless discussions of the beautiful weather Seattle has been having lately.