I can't think of many. I started off the morning on a bad note by dumping a full cup of coffee on the carpet outside my apartment door. That means that whenever I get home tonight, I have some spot-cleaning to do.

Whenever I get home. I'm supposed to be going to a meeting tonight, for Fair Vote Colorado. I'd originally volunteered to do some poll-watching on Election Day, but that was in the heyday of my political passion. Now that I'm stepping back from that whole thing, I don't want to go any more. (And yet...part of me says I should do something, at least once in my life, to protect democracy and open voting, you know?)

Anyhow, it sounds boring and PBS is currently running an exceptionally good special (last night, tonight, tomorrow night) on the history of the American Musical. Tonight at 8:00 they should be getting into the heart of Cole Porter territory and I'm reluctant to miss it.

Of course, I'll miss it anyhow, unless they decide to push the season opener for West Wing back until next week (because of the World Series). To be honest, I barely watched West Wing last year. I mean, the television was on every Wednesday night, but the only time I ever looked up from my book was when they broke for commercial since I was responsible for taping the episodes and we always try to tape without commercials.

This year, I care even less than I did last year and I think I may have to tell my roommate that if she wants the show commercial-free, she'll have to do it herself. I can't imagine many things I'm less interested in than wasting an hour on Wednesday evenings trying to make a "clean" copy of a show that bores me silly these days.

I mean, I didn't expect to like the show as much without Sorkin, but I had no idea it would become so banal so quickly. It surprises me how fast the characters I loved lost their charm for me.

Well, sort of surprises me. Not entirely. I'm a dialogue whore, no doubt about it, and the show now sounds just like any other show on television. The magic was in the words. I'm even entirely indifferent to the speculation that the show will be renewed with a Republican President taking over from Barlett. Without Sorkin's brain behind it, the concept is still different, but the execution is no more challenging or thought-provoking than that of a hundred other shows

The only thing I'm enjoying this year is Navy NCIS.

The Mountain Man showed up five minutes ago and I bought $20 worth of junk food. I figure by the time I get 2,000 or 3,000 calories worth of this stuff inside me, the day will have improved immensely. I've had about 800 in chocolate already and I'm feeling a tad more cheerful.

We've been having e-mail problems off and on for the last week here at the office. Mail comes in but it hangs for hours going out and sometimes doesn't arrive at its destination at all. I finally gave up and created an alias in my personal e-mail account, so I'd have a reliable way to send e-mail. I do 70% - 80% of my job via e-mail. It's a bit tricky to have it stop working.

Remember that thing we aren't talking about? The one I was working on yesterday while I was waiting for my meeting to start? Clocking in today at just over 44,000 words.* I did a bit of editing last night. It was appalling. You just can't change directions radically every five minutes on a story without creating an incredible mess.

Of course, it helps that most of my direction changes have taken place only in my mind. Usually before I actually get my hands on the story file, I've change my mind about the latest change I'd planned and I wind up sitting there, staring at the words on the screen and wondering if I might prefer to take up embroidery or snake-charming for a hobby.

But...I almost forgot. We're not talking about that.

(* But I will say that I went back in and remove 500 of those and improved it immensely. That's the interesting thing about my writing...the more I remove, the better it looks.)