"sometimes it's for the money, often it's for the fun"

Hell yes! Along with a bit of homework -- Old English all -- I wrote a whole bunch today. Over 2000 words, hurrah. That actually makes up for my deficit for two days. If I can do about 1300-1400 tomorrow, I'll have made up all the work I've missed, save Sunday (moving in day) where I figured I wouldn't do anything. Even if I don't make it up, that's okay, I'm just pleased I'm still capable of doing more than a few hundred words while here in Richmond. I liked some of what I did today quite well, so I'm gonna post some here for you. First, the word counter, and such:

( ###============== )
16,100 / 80,000 : 20.1%

And, some writin':

Derik gave Danielle a ruby, and the promise to meet her in the evening, then slouched off to his favorite flophouse, hidden as it was on the outskirts of Whitesteel Priory. The owner, a heavy man whose folds had grown over his massive oak chair, greeted Derik with his usual "H'llo, Darren." Derik tossed two bent copper coins onto the counter – it was a pocked, cracked thing, with three deep gouges that curved along fractured parabolas – and a key flew over the edge of the owner's yellowed libel sheet. Derik caught this and fumbled his way up a staircase so close musty that stepping onto the first stair was a bit like stepping into the ocean: that is, a new atmosphere hits you all at once, and you're not sure if you'll ever make it out the other end.

The room number was scratched on the key, which wasn't so good, as the hallway at stairs' end had a single, guttering oil lamp in the far, shifting black distance. Derik rubbed his thumb over the key, like he did whenever he came here, sighed, and banged on the second door on his left – the first was always occupied by some fellow with a large beard who didn't enjoy knocking, or people, really. No one answered, so Derik picked the flimsy lock and dropped the key on the tiny table near the bed. The room was just slightly bigger than the bed, with enough room to drop your shoes and close the door. Derik did just that, then collapsed onto the bed, bopping it with one fist to crush the worst of the lumps.

A smell of dead insects and rotting cloth filled the air when Derik struck the bed. Derik coughed and swallowed past the tainted air and spit in the back of his throat, threatening a little vomit. He pulled the velvet package from one pocket, and the lace handkerchief from the other, and balanced both on the table. "Lucky old Gerhold's next door," Derik said, fluffing the natty pillow. This was the only public place Derik would ever leave his stolen goods, as no one ever wanted to risk breaking into the wrong room and getting the tip of Gerhold's stumpy spear leveled at their face.

The man was a little shorter than Derik, which made him quite short indeed, and had a bulky beard capable of hiding hams – Gerhold usually smelt as though he were hiding hams, actually, and he wore thick cotton shirts and half-cloaks no matter the weather. He took a different room every night, and then crept out and took his usual, first on the left with the busted lock and the mass of homey quilts wadded under the bed. No one aside from Derik knew, and that was because he'd flattened himself on the stairs, a black cap he'd been fond of at the time concealing his forehead, and watched the whole process. It was odd, watching a man as stocky as Gerhold sneak along a creaky, water-eaten corridor with spear in hand, but he'd done it.

There was a small window in Derik's room, frozen in place by too many expansions of the cheap wood. A vague, half-remembered light shuffled through it, and this stuttered in a slow, deliberate manner. Derik sat up, brain stuffed with the vision-blurring wool of almost-sleep, and blinked. It didn't happen again, but the light never wavered either – he hunched over himself for quite a while, the tiny hours of the morning beginning to sneak by, but finally he slumped backwards and slept.

~~~

The next morning was as fine and promising as the previous day had been. A muffled sort of blue showed up through Derik's window, a small synecdoche of the wide bright sky cracking the winter kinks from its back and straightening up above Floren. People were up already, going about their madness and deviltry. Derik had planned to sleep until his body protested the lack of food or urine storage, but a loud, crackly cry woke him. He lay on the bed, thin cover stretched underneath him, and stared at the ceiling, covered in the dusty remnants of webs and the gentle fuzz that rises out of unfinished wood. Another cry pierced the thin walls, and Gerhold – Derik recognized the voice – said, "What the shit do you want, you hell-roasted wax-fucker?"

Derik laughed at that, as he usually laughed at Gerhold's proclivity for strange and byzantine cursing. He stopped laughing, however, when the walls rattled, a high, anus-clenching voice said something Derik couldn't understand, and the tip of Gerhold's spear appeared through the wall, accompanied by a thin laugh and a gusty "shit!"

Irony:

Reading the book Maggie bought for my birthday, which smells of patchouli, and finding this on page 92:


toothpaste for dinner

"they want no ravers moving in around here"

Yar, and the like. Here's some me-news, for those of you with an interest:

I have been working on my novel every day, in spite of school, but I've been hitting around 500 words, instead of 1000. I also had to do a memoir (gag) for creative writing, which is finished now, at around 1100 words -- that took me two days, which would be incredibly depressing, but it's a memoir, and I don't care. Even if I did center it on the Duke of Weillington.

I finally met my new boss and know about my job now. I am the "Program Assistant" for the English department -- that is, Professor Flann knew I would need to e-mail people for information and help, and gave me a title so the person at the other end wouldn't think, "Oh, just another grad. student." I've had to flitter out an e-mail signature featuring it twice, so we'll see how that works. She mentioned bunches of things she'd like me to look up -- apparently EKU requires teachers to do one more class than other universities, so she's swamped, and I'm doing the basic look-up stuff for her. Y'know, how much do the other low-residency M.F.A. programs around here charge? How many residencies do they have each year? &c. It was a bit tedious, but I made it through, no worries.

My birthday was fairly lackluster -- I've had better, but I've also had worse. Only one person showed up last night, so I couldn't really get around to games. We tried to play Trivial Pursuit, but kept getting distracted by videos and books. I'm hoping Friday goes better.

If my work continues in this vein, my week will be glorious -- I'm pretty much done on Wednesday afternoon. I'm sure work will advance on me later, but we'll see.

I'm having less trouble going to sleep once I get into the bedroom -- but I'm having a little more trouble convincing myself to get to bed. Classic school problem: I tend to keep a vague picture of all the crap I have to do slotted between my brain lobes, so I always want to try and get more done. I've already gotten a little ahead in one class, and I'll probably spend today on the other. Aside from glorious, hopefully unfettered writing. Mmm.

The downside is, with little money and no classes, I'm not sure I'll see anybody today. Everyone seems to be working or attending classes of their own. Ah well.

"Se theow is aac."

Johnny get ready and go ska tonight

Here's an odd meme sort of thing:

Ten Things I've Done that You Probably Haven't

1. I was in hospital when I was three or four -- kindergarten aged, anyway. Six? I'm not sure anymore. And, I mean, hospital. At one point I was rushed into the emergency room of our local hospital: my liver was so swollen it was visibly poking from my abdomen. I remember nothing of this, save the faint, fingers on windows imprint of the mad, wheeled-cot rush. None of the pain, thankfully. I was later transferred to Lexington, and spent at least two weeks there, a bit frightened, mostly because my parents clearly were. I remember two pains from my stay: the wasting, sluggish ache of vomiting constantly with no energy to hold myself up, and the faux-rending pain of a catheter. My dad tells the story of hearing the doctor claim that none of them could figure out what was actually wrong with me. Just two years ago I heard him tell someone else -- he never bothered to mention it to me directly -- that our family doctor said it was Eastern Tick Fever. That sounds about right, as far as I know.
   
   
2. I wrecked my first car, snapping an axle in the ditchline, whirling across the road like a ballerina with greased feet, thumping into a tree, and cascading down a hill. To this day I'm not sure if I went end-over-end, like a thrown knife, or along the car's axis, like the spun cylinder of a revolver. I emerged unharmed, and technically committed a crime when a friend drove by and took me to his house to clean up and call my cousin. We met the police officer on our way back.
   
   
3. I broke my toe by catching the tip on a sleeping bag I'd left out on the floor, and resting my weight onto it, snapping it like a twig, with the same protruding, sharp end -- that came up through the base of my toenail.
   
   
4. On an informal sort of day, with just one try apiece, I outshot a professional gun-maker and marksman, using my right hand. I'm left-handed, and the rifle was an old-fashioned flintlock, with a powder pan on the right. The puff of grey from the flash pan is beautiful, in its own way, with the bellowing stink of sulfur, but I couldn't press that to my face, could I?
   
   
5. I've performed the soft-gentle piano chords of Yes's "Time and a Word" on a vibraphone, and had the sun burst through heavy cloud cover as I begin, just far enough to illuminate me and the shining silver keys as I played. Twice. This was our drum major's favorite, and we were both graduating that year. She wept when she noticed what was happening.
   
   
6. I have been accused of keeping a list of people to kill, and plotting to bring a weapon to school so I could shorten the list. This was based on a crass comment I made that I hardly remember, as three girls on the bus had driven me into hysterics. I hardly remember any of what happened. After talking to the police -- I know most of them personally, though not well -- no action was taken against me, and one of the girls was banned from the bus. She wasn't supposed to be on our bus in the first place.
   
   
7. I wrote a poem about no. six, and called it "Witch Hunt," because I was a heavy-handed bastard in high school, then posted it everywhere I could in the school, to the supporting voices of many. My band director, and a few other teachers, made a point of keeping it up all year. The copy at the front desk was torn down, and the advisor said it could be construed as threatening. It couldn't be.
   
   
8. I realize none of these have come from after high school, but nothing impressive has happened to me -- I haven't really done anything worth mentioning, since. Save no. ten. Anyway. The new principal of my high school took me aside and said I had to change my valedictorian speech (or, something -- we had six val &cs that year, because of confusion about the grading scale; one person had higher grades than me, so I guess, to everyone else ever, I would be a salutatorian). He claimed no one in the gymnasium would understand it. There was nothing to understand, save some imagery; I was tempted to ask why he was allowing them to graduate if that were true. Sick of my high school by this point (see six and seven), I aquiesced, and read a poem that had nothing to do with high school, graduation, or anything. Everyone loved it.
   
   
9. I have failed to learn to dance since my junior prom, despite how much I enjoy it.
   
   
10. I wrote a full-length (though short) novel of my own creation, then used it to fulfill my undergraduate (honors) thesis.