Dear Diary . . . day by day

Sunday, October 7th, 2001 - Food for Thought

They're very careful not to call it war, aren't they?
Tim and I have been being very sweet and kind to one another lately. It's not that we've never fought, and it's scary when we do fight, but these past few weeks we've been very careful and gentle with one another. Lots of good reasons for this kind of behavior: national crisis, other people not being who we thought they were, having no money/job search stress. It's nice to know how well we stand together when put to the test; it's good to know, really know, who you can count on in the world right now, and it's wonderful that mine is living in my home with me.
Last night I made a three-course Thai dinner for our date night. I'd had all three dishes at David's before, but last night was the first time I'd tried to cook it on my own. And it took 3 hours. And I trashed the kitchen (which Tim had cleaned a few hours before; I've been cooking a lot lately and he does the clean up - it makes cooking a lot more fun, I'll tell you that!).
But, damn, the food was good. The soup is incredibly flavorful, with coconut milk, soy sauce, lemon juice and ginger. The salad isn't my favorite, but Tim enjoyed it, and we both stuffed ourselves on the creamy Thai green curry. Yummmmm. We also finally got our Buffy Season 3 tapes a few days ago, so we had fantastic TV to watch while we ate. Nice.
Today we walked over to Piedmont to buy coffee at Gaylord's and work on our collab. Unfortunately, we could hardly find room to stand in Gaylord's, let alone room to sit and write, so we ended up at a nasty chain store that honestly is much more conducive to working than our beloved Gaylord's, even though the chain store can't make a latte worth a damn.
I wrote the first 1000 words of the collab, but then Tim pointed out that I was setting up too many complications for a short story (I think I may be subconsciously over-ready to begin my novel), so I rewrote one bit, cut a bunch and turned the laptop around with only 500 streamlined words on it. The story is really cool, and I gave my, er, our protagonist a career I wanted for myself when I was a kid. It's a weird, weird career choice, which means I get points for originality (despite it being almost trite in my own little world).
Anyway, we had fancy eggs and pancakes for dinner. I'm getting very good at fancy scrambled eggs; tonight we had red bell pepper ($0.99 a lb right now, Mom), onion, garlic, chopped Bocca burger, cherry tomatoes in eggs seasoned with basil, oregano, a dash of dill and salt and pepper. Yummmmmm.
It's weird, I'm in a good mood today, and it feels so strange. Lately, I've been so damn down every day . . . and I still would be if Tim wasn't around to cheer me up, make me love life in spite of strife. He's so good. It also doesn't hurt that I applied for a dream job on Friday that I think I may have a good chance at - I wrote both a kick-ass cover letter and two awesome writing samples. I've been applying for so many jobs I don't even want that it felt weird to be excited about a potential job.
Anyway, it's nice to enjoy a weekend.

Exercise log:
Walked over the hill and back again. Will get into gym again soon.
Writing log:
Check out my new Bibliography page.
Collabs seem to be the way to get me writing, and my boyfriend is good at pestering me to do them. Today I wrote 1000 words of a new collab with Tim, but it was cut to 500 words once we figured out where we wanted to go with it.
Current Publications:
In the Shade of You a poem at Speculon.
San Francisco City Guide at EGrad.com. Written by me, edited by someone else.
I'm currently reading:
Out of the Everywhere by James Tiptree Jr./Alice Sheldon
If There Were Wolves a poetry chapbook by Tim Pratt
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt
Okay, so I'm just reading the very rough first draft of the chapters fresh off the 'puter, but damn, it's already good!
My PO Box is:
Heather Shaw
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222

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