February 7

Dear Weather,

Please get snowy and stormy again before 6:00 tomorrow evening, so I can decide that it isn’t safe to drive to my class so I can not go to school without feeling guilty.

And if it isn’t too much to ask, could you keep road conditions hazardous through Wednesday morning, enough to make the university close again?  I’m supposed to teach a writing class then, but I don’t want the cancellation to be my fault.

Gratefully Yours,

Someone who really loves to read novels bundled up on the couch with a cup of tea

April 2

1.  The Old Man Is Snoring.  It’s a positively solid wall of water outside, and while the raindrops make a pleasant white noise on the roof, it’s so gloomy and dreary that I’m more likely to fall into a trance than mere sleep.  I never expected Texas to be so very wet.

2.  Ben Fountain.  I’ve just finished reading Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, and I am delighted to say that I now have a little literary crush on the character from the first story, John Blair.  Each of the eight stories was masterfully crafted–pardon me while I swallow my envy.  Happily, I will be meeting Ben Fountain later this month (he will be visiting my university) for a reading and a Q&A, during which I am guaranteed to be too awed to ask a question.

3.  Performance Anxiety.  Speaking of which, I’ll be giving a reading myself this evening with two of my fellow graduate students at a local venue as part of a graduate creative writing reading series.  I am perfectly petrified and very much regretting the peer pressure I succumbed to when I signed up.  I’m reading one of my older stories, one of the more polished ones, and I’m terrified that it will be too boring.  Some of the other stories have been funny, and mine… isn’t.  Oh well.  It’ll all be over tomorrow.

4.  April Fool’s.  For the first time in a long time, I neither played a joke nor was joked upon.  What kind of world is this when National Lie to Your Friends Day goes uncelebrated?

What I Ate Today

• A hamburger, decorated with cheese, lettuce, and ketchup.
• A handful of potato chips.
• Some cantaloupe.
• Two small strips of brisket.
• Two baby corns-on-the-cob.
• A slice of turtle pie.
• A slice of chocolate cream pie.
• A piece of chocolate fudge cake.

And then it poured rain and everyone was sleepy.  Happy Fourth of July!

The end.

Lakefront Property

As of this morning, I now reside in lakefront property.  Construction is underway on the vacant lot outside our window, and the plots they have dug are all filled with water.  Because there was a tornado last night.

That’s right, I was in a tornado.*  I was merely sitting on the couch, relaxing after a long day at work, when all of a sudden the skies were an eerie green and I realized that the sound I’d been hearing was the wind.  There was a fierce thunderstorm, with lightning all around, and as I referred to the radar on the internet, the tornado sirens nearby went off.

And for the first time in my life I believed them.  So I gathered up my computer, purse, and ferret, put on jeans, shoes, and a jacket, and sat in my laundry room for twenty-five minutes until the air outside stopped sounding like a tunnel.  Beforehand, I wanted to see what the wind speed was like, but I was unable to open my front door because the wind and pressure blowing through the outdoor hallway and stairwell had suctioned it closed.

It was a little bit creepy.

But Anastasia was happy.  She is not usually permitted to be in the laundry room and was eager to sniff around.  I kept her on my lap and stroked her nose reassuringly, but she wasn’t the least bit worried that we were on the third floor and might at any moment get sucked away into the cyclonic air or alternately crushed by the hot water heater.  She lacks imagination.

Everything is fine, and now I live by a lake.  Yay.

*Statement unconfirmed.

Es regnet.

I must say I didn’t expect this: a rainy day in Texas in August. For some reason I particularly like listening to Chris Rice when it is overcast. I’ve been lounging around the apartment by myself, which is wonderful, baking strawberry bread and reading about the Arab Revolt and about the history of the telescope. This afternoon might involve an excursion to Ikea, or possibly to a bookstore, as if I don’t own an overwhelming number of books that are dying to be read. But my currently reading, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T. E. Lawrence, is a 600+ page monster, so don’t expect a review too soon. If you’re impatient, I encourage you to pick it up yourself, as it is positively marvelous so far.

Here is a license plate Philip spotted:

BLT 666

He called it the sandwich from hell. I married a very witty man.

Carnival

This evening I will finish writing my last undergraduate research paper. The subject is Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of carnivalesque as seen in Jhumpa Lahiri’s excellent short story “Interpreter of Maladies” in the Pulitzer-prize winning short story collection of the same name. Vanity urges me to make this the best paper I’ve ever written, but realism reminds me of my motto this semester: Work smart, not hard. And anyway, after all the energies that I channeled into my honors thesis, I would be kidding myself if I thought I had enough left for excellence.

Today I was soaked by rain from the sky. It made my skin cold and clammy, and even though I’m dry now, the effect hasn’t worn off.

<Edit>

I’m all finished. Farewell paper-writing, hello fiction.