I may, finally, have found a critical "bonding point" with the Chipmunk. He's supposed to be visiting our fair city, and office, in a week or two and I discovered this morning that among his other charms (like, he hasn't called us for a week because he took the week off without informing anyone so we've been thinking he was down there working and he's really at Disneyworld or something), he has a daughter who's in competitive figure skating.

As some of my friends know to their dismay :) I am something of a fan of figure skating and if I can't create a bond with this fool on the subject of his beloved daughter's pastime, I'll hang up my B.S. shoes and retire from the business.

Hmph.

Because I'm not a nice person, I'll mention that it continues to be good news to me that Alvin's dissatisfaction with the progress of things around here is centered upon the Chipmunk and not on my probably-equally-as-culpable self.

If Alvin were aware, of course, that I'd composed the larger part of a 50,000 word novel while sitting at my desk over the last two weeks, he'd feel differently, but I'm actually dishonest enough to be okay with that.

Ah. The novel. It's done. Or, as done as it's likely to get. The weak attempt at plot I scrounged up was enough (with the addition if yet another gratuitous sex scene, bringing the novel's total, I believe, to six) to put me over the mark. It's not what you'd really call a 'novel' in the strictest sense of the word since it's characterizationally appalling, structurally aimless, and stylistically schizophrenic, but since I don't intend that any human being on the planet will ever read it, I don't care.

I wrote the bloody thing in 18 days and that's enough for me.

Well, okay, I didn’t write all of it in 18 days. When I was racking my brain for a plot to use to pad out the word-count, I happened to remember that my first, never-to-be-completed, Highlander story had a scene in it that would be easily adapted for my purpose, so about 3,000 words of the 50k were written ten or more years ago. Similarly, one of the sex scenes was lifted from another abandoned story and adapted. Hmmm...okay, so I'm short of "new, original" material by about 5,000 words.

Sue me.

Life is fairly peaceful on the urban front at the moment.

As I was getting this morning's coffee (stop me if I've mused on this subject before) it occurred to me to wonder exactly when I became able to carry on a conversation with a man wearing two heavy silver earrings, about five bracelets, and two silver necklaces and not even notice anything odd for about five months.

I spent the morning printing the documents I'm going to need in New Orleans next week and putting them in some kind of order so that I could find what I need when I need it.

I've decided against renting a car, what with my complete inability to navigate and all. A visit to Mapquest proved that four of the five offices I have to visit are less than 5 miles from my hotel. That means taking cabs will actually be cheaper. Hooray!

I'm staying near the Superdome, which is a crummy neighborhood, and staying in a Ramada Inn, and I hate two-star hotels, so I'm massively cranky about the whole trip even before I start. The good news, so far, is that I did manage to find a direct flight so I don't have to deal with one of those annoying layovers in the airport in Houston.

If I never again see the shrine to the Bush family that they've erected there, it will still be a year too soon.