Well. Five Weeks of Heavy-Duty Production Work.

Three weeks for the public utility, and two weeks for the bimonthly magazine.

And now I need to sleep for about five years, go to a Halloween party, do some housework, and catch up on my staff job.

Then I get to scrounge for clients again.

I know I sound tired, and I am. That is not, however, the whole story: when I'm working it reminds me how fucking good I am at what I do, and that fact really keeps the depressions at bay. If I were to learn how to sell my editing and production abilities on that basis (or, for crying out loud, my fiction), it would indeed be a grand thing.

But in the meantime, sleep sounds good.

Over at Hog Beatty's, a few of his friends and neighbors met for drinks in the eveing. This was cool, and I had a little gin, nibbling my way through the appetizers brought over by one of the people in his housing complex. When someone offered me a good cigar, I accepted. Count Linguist and I shared a smoke there on the back deck in Santa Monica, and my jaw finally unclenched after over a month as I listened to people speaking Arabic and Russian and Ukranian&none of which, of course, I understand. It was all so fucking good.

I don't smoke enough; can't we do a PSA about the need for more cigars in the 21 Century?

I'd like to teach the world cigars,
and perfect harmony . . .

Of course, if they don't start smoking, that's more for me. And nothing else quite does it: even booze. (Though, you know: the best booze comes pretty darned close.)

Happy Halloween. Make friends with the local spiders; they are your friends, despite what J.K. Rowling would have you believe.