Monday

For me, part of writing involves harnessing my creativity. Or rather, learning to write down the exciting confrontations that my mind invents while I'm trying to get to sleep, or the solutions I come up with to quiet my night fears.

Sometimes I do get up and write it down. One advantage is that the process of writing tends to 'use up' that particular fantasy, giving me more peace when I return to bed. (This can be a downside when writing *sexual* fantasies.... ;) Other times I'm too tired, and just try to convince that part of my mind to *calm* *the* *fuck* *down* *already* to that I can sleep.

Hm.

The one I just wrote up is variation 1 of a fear that has been keeping me for the last week. With luck it'll quit being such a force over me. With even better luck I'll be able to use it in a story one of these days....

Oh, and I *soloed* today in jw1776's truck. Deliberately soloed, that is, not jump-over-the-gearshift-real-quick-and-drive-around-TheFair soloed. Okay, it was just down to QFC, but now I have the ingredients to make the turkey pot pie I want to surprise Jesse with. Yes, I am a golden god.

From Dave Barry today...

Columbia

I have an odd little connection to the Columbia: It once carried a book of mine into space. This was on a 1995 mission, STS-73, Oct. 20 to Nov. 5. An astronaut named Marsha Ivins, a neat lady with whom I've corresponded over the years, gave the crew of that mission a copy of Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys to read in space. All seven crew members -- none of whom was on the shuttle for its final mission -- wrote little inscriptions to me in the book. For example, the pilot, Kent Rominger, wrote: "You are right, the Space Shuttle is the ultimate gizmo!" After they landed, Marsha gave the book back to me. I always thought it was very cool, to have a book that had gone into space. Now it means something different, of course. But I'll treasure it.

Source: Dave's Blog