Last week, McSwain recommended Immediate Fiction as a how-to book on writing for those who'd rather be popular than good. I may get it. I'm always up for another book that explains to me how I'm never going to learn to write decently. At least this one seems to be about book writing. Most of the books I've found are about script-writing, as though that was the be-all and end-all of any aspiring writer's dreams these days.

Saturday I lunched with a dear friend I don't see often enough. I always enjoy seeing her...possibly because her manners are so much better than mine that she lets me monopolize the conversation. She says she likes to hear me talk. but I assume since her own life is full of stresses and strains at the moment, she's actually just hiding from reality and not listening to me at all. And I'm cool with that.

Saturday, I made an unfortunate junk-food grocery store run bought Fritos, cheese crackers, and chocolate. I emptied the Frito bag in one day...proving that I need to restrict that to a once-a-month indulgence in the future. (And buy the "grab bag" size instead of the bigger bag.) I made inroads on the cheese crackers but not to any disgraceful extent. I've already chowed down on every piece of chocolate I got for Christmas and I ate an appalling amount of that I bought on Saturday as well. So...it's back to fat-free hot chocolate for me.

Saturday I bought a router and hooked up a wireless network at home. It was laughably easy. I mean, I had a tech problem at one point (it all seemed to have installed properly but I couldn't get on-line), so I called the 800#, was put right through to a tech, and he resolved it in 30 seconds. (Later I will be posting the name of this company so that those of you thinking of going the wireless route will know of at least one company with fabulous tech support. I'd post it now if I wasn't drawing a blank on the name.) Now I'm wondering if a wireless mouse might not complete my journey to Cord-Free Joy.*

Sunday, I woke up with A Back. For the third..or fifth...or something consecutive day in a row. I may have to resign myself to the fact that I have A Back.

It makes life An Adventure. Putting on my shoes, for instance. That's adventurous. Changing the sheets on the bed...that's very adventurous. I can't wait until the next time I have to scrub the bathroom floor. That's a hands-and-knees proposition, or you can't get to the corners. It's a small bathroom...but it's all corners. I foresee An Adventure.

Walking is good, though. It makes The Back feel better. Yesterday morning I walked over to St~rbucks and had a Ch~ntico. (I can't type either of those words again. The last time I did, it produced Unfortunate Results in the way of links from professional media sites and that's really not what this blog is all about.) Both creamy-delicious products made my back feel much better.

Anything that involves standing up and not bending is Not Adventurous, so I managed to make a pot of chili and a pot of vegetable-beef soup yesterday. Since I'm resigned to a lifetime of yogurt breakfasts, I'm set for daytime food this week. For tonight's dinner, I have a nice chunk of salmon. (I'm hoping I can fool my hips into forgetting the Fritos.)

Sunday I wrote twenty or thirty lines of dialogue for a new short story.** At least...I wrote 20-30 lines of pretty good dialogue. We'll see if a story wraps itself around them. It's DS. I'm dabbling with that and Sen at the moment.

Sunday I finished the re-coding of the website and loaded it. (Ferd is such a pleasure to use. Stretched out on the floor, sitting at the dining table, curled up in my comfy recliner....) I'm frustrated that some of the new pages are loading too slowly but I'm not sure if I can fix them. I made certain the files weren't huge so I suspect it's weirdnesses in the coding that are creating the problem. Not much I can do about that. (I mean, yeah, I could go on-line to one of those "let us review your code" websites, I guess. Or, you know, double-check the sizes of the graphics files. I rather suspect that the one I used for Lynn's page will have to be replaced. Her page loads far too slowly. It's a pretty graphic, but it may have to go.)

Today the Maintenance Men are supposed to be replacing the carpet pad in our entryway at home, thus cleaning up the last of the damage from the Great Flood of '05. This will allow us to move the rest of the furniture back into place and forget what a ghastly day or two we had. (I left work early on Friday to mop the kitchen floor, wipe the counters and cabinets down, again, vacuum, again, and do a bit of dusting and furniture-shifting. That cleaned up most of the residue, but there was one bookcase we couldn't move back into place until the carpet stuff was done.)

Today, an exceptionally Kind Friend dropped me a note that she's finished reading through the S.E.N. and has hopes of being able to key in and send her thought some day soon. I feel badly. She's clearly put more work into this than the story was at all worth. Still, anything she has to say is always worth hearing.

Today I went to St~rbucks and did not have a Ch~ntico. At least...not yet. I just discovered that Buehler is out of town...so I may indulge myself later today.

In the meantime...work!
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* It's great to be a mobile and stuff, but do you ever feel like you're tied up in cords any more? Power cords, mouse cords, headphone cords, sunglass cords, seatbelt cords, hands-free phone cords. I didn't realize being a grown-up involved so much voluntary bondage, okay? I mean, if Robert Redford was showing up at my house with a feather and some chocolate pudding...okay. But other than that, it's starting to get on my nerves.

** It's a complete mystery to me how I can sit down and write what I know is decent dialogue at the drop of a hat, but I can't write a story. I've decided that part of the problem is probably my source material...I need to switch for a while to a better-designed universe. Sort of...you know, ease back into it, before I tackle the problems that come with this particular universe.