Okay, so I woke up this morning, checked my email, checked my website, read a little newspaper, and ate breakfast. Then I got on the bus and rode down to Tempe. I shoped at the Zia’s here (Damn them! They had 5 movies and a CD I wanted! I could only put 5 things on hold, so I bought the new Liz Phair CD and unless something changes my mind will go back for the DVDs before I get on the bus tonight.) for a little while, then wandered over to ASU. I looked in the ASU Computer Store to see that they didn’t have any iPods left in stock (silly people not stocking enough iPods for the new semester), and to wander around in that college crowd. I always get this … great? feeling from wandering around on a crowded college campus. I like it. Sure, I never really feel like I ‘fit in’, but … I’m still there, a part of the energy of the place. And I like it. And then Iain called to say he wouldn’t be seeing me today. Which I kinda knew, what with his two jobs and a class miles away. But he reminded me that Mo works right there on campus, so I wandered over and shocked Mo by knowing where he works. Where his office is and where he sits. He wouldn’t believe that I’d been there before, so I guess I must just have dreamt it. Accurately to reality. So Mo and I chatted for a little while, though we didn’t quite get much into capitalism. But in 30 to 60 days I should have a write-up at least for … well, he knows. It’s hard to explain without getting into it.
Then, I went up into the Hayden Library Stacks and wrote a page of a letter to a friend of mine before my lunch date with Jen. Jen and I went and enjoyed two-for-one Fatburgers with a coupon I was handed wandering around ASU. They do silly things like that in the first week of the semester. And then I headed down to Mill’s End where I planned on working on my novel until … I was done or it was time to get on the bus. I bought a large hot Chai tea with a shot of Caramel (highly recommended) and got a glass of ice water to drink, what with the walking around in the desert all morning. I set up my laptop and started ripping/listening to my new Liz Phair CD, and wrote about half a page of new material before I spilled half a glass of ice water across my table and my laptop and my lap. And it was a minute or two before the water seeped in enough to shut the laptop down, but then it wouldn’t come on again, no matter how dry I could get it. So, I tried airing it out, and I walked off to the post office to post a letter I failed to post yesterday (to the same friend), and when I came back it still wouldn’t power up. So, hopefully tomorrow or next week, when it’s dried enough, It’ll power on and I’ll be able to use it again. I’d hate to have destroyed my laptop with ice water. Ice is evil, I keep saying it, and people don’t believe me, but it attacked my laptop and now I’m computer-less.
So, I have a hard copy of the stuff I’m re-writing, but I failed to bring any notebook paper, so after I leave here, I’m going to go buy a pad of paper and go find a quiet place to work (maybe a library at ASU. Perhaps the law library, because it’s silly) and I’m going to try to work on it on paper. The new material is no problem, but it seems extra tedious to re-write the 75 pages or so by hand when (if I had a working computer) I could do the editing on the computer. There’s not a whole lot I need to change about it. I’ll see what all I can work out with paper and margins and clever references and notations.
Anyway, so there’s this new place on Mill, where Cafe Boba used to be, called Lan Gamz. It’s a bunch of Wintel PCs connected together and to the internet and you can play games and surf the web and whatever, and they’re charging $4/hour right now. They set you up with an account and they say they last forever, so if I only use half an hour today, I can come back any time and use the other half hour I just bought. Well, considering I’ve already been sitting here writing for half an hour, thats probably how this will go.
Anyway, yeah. Fun day! Not too stressed out. I think I’ve made a bargain with myself about the iPod thing, too. I think I’ve decided that I can NOT buy the iPod for a while. I think I’ve decided that I will buy the iPod only as soon as my book sales are enough to cover it. At my current projected profit per copy of the book, I should be able to get an iPod with only 40 or 50 copies sold. Of course, if I can somehow find 2500+ people who want to buy my book, I can go the VW New Beetle route. Whee! Heck, if I can get 250+ people to buy it (Hah! If only I had a marketing department!) I could afford a new laptop. Maybe one that drinks water without dying. (Hah!)
Anyway, yeah. So that should push me to get the novel polished to a wonderful read. The iPod fever fed through my novel-writing Mania.
Okay, 40 minutes now. I’m going.
