Dear Diary . . . day by day

Friday, January 12th, 2001 - Write as Rain

Well, I wrote away at work today (I asked and was given an ok; at least I look nice and busy) but Yahoo! was down in the afternoon and apparently didn't send the new draft through. Argh!
I wrote quite a lot of this story, which has the boring working title of "Mind Story". Last night while I was writing it, I thought "Oooh, possibly a novel here?" but now I think I was just ovewhelmed by the amount of writing I was doing after such a drought. It's just a nice, long, story.
Especially the bits I wrote today. Rrgh! I can drag stuff back out of the recycle bin in Windows 98, yes? As long as I left the computer on and no one empties the trash?
Deep breath.
The job, by the way, is in this beautiful set of Victorian houses near downtown Oakland. It's made to look like a Victorian neighborhood, with stone and wrought iron gate surrounding it, lamp posts and picket fences and a fountain in the middle. I have a nice view down the street from my second-floor window (the insides are nice and knobby; my co-worker sits in a rounded tower room), and I watch the changing patterns of the rain, the overflowing water flying out of the fountain, the soaked green lawns. I tried to go to the other side of the house when the sun shone through the rain - I was looking for the rainbow of course - but at the back of the house the Oakland reality shows through; all I could see was either the house next door or the church behind us. City houses; geesh!
I also had a really pleasant chat with a co-worker who also happens to write. I love temping; I meet the most interesting people at all these jobs. This is a really pleasant office; nice change from Ms. X and the job from hell.
I am somewhat paranoid that talking about my writing will jinx it. Where do I get such ideas? I'm a reasonable person, I should know better. But I can't help getting a feeling sometimes . . .
Argh! Talking about it will ensure it happens! I shut up now!
Finally, an apology to the good folks at Lanminds, for my entry of 1/4/01, where it came across as if I was slamming their service. I write these journal entries online, right onto the server, and I make no promises about the quality of the writing. I was trying to convey (badly) my frustration over the futilty of going up against big corporations like PacBell, who won't hear me yell and will route me through phone tree hell, disconnecting me right before I get to the person I need to talk to. (For those of you who are new, I used to work for PacBellInternet; we regularly had our friends take calls as "managers" to handle a difficult situation.) If the problem with the disconnects were actually with Lanminds it wouldn't be a problem this long; I still trust that, as long as my friends work there. Unfortunately, it didn't sound like that at all the way I (sloppily) wrote it, and I am editing the entry to better convey my true sentiments. I'm sorry, guys. I'll be more careful of how and what I say from now on.

Exercise log:
Walked up an ungodly amount of steps from the bowels of Oakland (12th Street BART) to the wet, windy and winding world above. Lifted weights on Wednesday: shoulders. A 15 minute abs+ class and 15 minutes running on the precor machine.
Writing log:
Left 1500 words on the computer where I worked yesterday. Hope I'm working today!
I'm currently reading:
Read yesterday:
Starlight 2 Anthology edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Still Flipping Through:
The Writer - Janurary 2001 (magazine)
Still reading, off and on:
Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier

My new PO Box is:
Heather Shaw
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222

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