Peeking into the rock

Wrote: half the last chapter of the romantic comedy, and a chapter of the thing about the guy who is at one with the water system and enmeshed in a political struggle he doesn't understand and doesn't want to care about until people start threatening him.

It's close to a stopping place, but if I stopped it where it feels like it ought to end, it would be 40K or less, which makes it not a novel. Where the story goes after that isn't to my liking as a thing to write: I mean, I envision forty-fifty years of a life by turns tedious to describe because it's all about the bureaucratic plodding, and briefly, explosively dangerous, with those episodes not so much resolving as retreating as an ebb tide, the danger promising to return in its own time. You could write that, I suppose, as a picaresque, or an adventure series, and there've been more unlikely heroes for adventure stories than a water engineer with unlikely powers of perception and communication with watery things. No, it's not a fantasy, and his powers are not supernatural. He's been genetically tweaked so he can do his job better, is all. The bacteria and algae that have been tweaked to act as controls and movers for the water system don't have personalities. No sprites anywhere. Just biology and engineering and hydrology.

It occurs to me that it might work as a fixup with the similarly short one about the guy who has been set up to think he's a nutcase, so the bad guys can pin the assassination of our guy's mentor on him. Except it happens about fifty years earlier, now that I think about it. Unless I rework it completely.

I have called several termite outfits and finally got one that returned my call and is willing to come look at my house. The painter I was talking to before the house revealed all its horrors is now too busy. Another painter thinks he may not be able to get to it very soon, but he's coming out. I have called several tree services but not one has answered me.

The tree thing is getting urgent. I can hear my almond trees scraping against Hanelore's garage.

I have another job interview on Tuesday. I volunteered last week twice at the school where the Watershed Council is doing projects. I helped Emma move a bit. I worked the polls on Tuesday. I went with Zac to buy lumber.

I fixed my horrible leaking rear hose faucet. Practically falling in love with the woman who works in plumbing at the hardware store while I was at it. She was so competent and calm. It's too late for me to be her when I grow up, I'll have to make do with what I've got.

I got mc to two of the appointments he needs to get to for his SSI evaluation, which is all the appointments they've set up so far.

I deadheaded the front roses.

I got the checkbook for the life insurance account so now I can pay all my big bills and get my car tuned up.

I'm going to be out of money in a couple of months, but I won't have to do any of these things to my house again. And I'll be working soon.

So, and the nice fellow's birthday came and went and I survived it. One more first-without-him I don't have to look forward to.

I have discovered that if Truffle doesn't get a decent walk three days in a row, she will pine: she'll stop eating, she'll get constipated, and she'll start to look Addison's-y.

So I am working on getting up earlier so she'll get her good walk even after I start working again.

Oh, also, I figured out how to make a thing in Milkshape, but not how to view it in a form that will allow me to see how the texturing is working out. Nor do I know how to export the thing into SimPe, or how to scale it so it's actually the size it needs to be for the Sims. The project I'm working on in Milkshape is interchangeable pieces to make false fronts for Southwestern-style buildings, which also seem to be exactly what's needed to make the false fronts on the narrow old buildings I saw in Amsterdam and Prague.

So they called the first real rain of the season today at about 5:30, and I'm up the mountain at Gloria's until 7:30 or 8. I'll swing by the "hub" -- a house where the stuff is dropped off -- to see if I can help, but I expect by the time I get there all the excitement will be over. And I found some nifty rain pants at the Goodwill today, too, when I took Gloria there.

October fourth and the rainy season has begun, more or less. It's really more of what I call "will it really rain again?" season. Because sometimes the first rain is followed by a dry spell. It also puts me in an awkward position re the boy who I'm not really letting sleep on my couch (because I just can't stand having him there all the time, sorry). I meant to have him set up before now, but I don't. I may have to let him sleep there a few more times, which will annoy Frank and Emma and the nice fellow very much. While it was summer, and dry and warm enough at night, I could afford to be cold about it.

Even though our climate is completely clement, it is not healthy to get wet here and stay wet for a long time. Every year a few people die out there -- usually old, ill, or alcoholic or junkies, but occasionally a young healthy sober person too.

This just in: the FBI has decided that there is some criminality involved in the spinach fiasco and has raided Grower's Express, a packing company which has not been mentioned in any of the reports or investigations till now. They say they're investigating allegations that somebody somewhere might not have taken all the necessary steps to insure spinach safety before putting the bagged salads into interstate commerce.

You know what? This is bullshit. They can't find contaminants at the packing sheds they've already looked at. They won't find contaminants in the office records of this company either. What they're doing is seizing on an opportunity to make the Office of Homeland Security look like it gives a damn about something. By turning it into an FBI action instead of an FDA action, they've turned it from a medical and scientific issue into a political one. (that is, they've robbed the issue of its last scientific vestiges and thrown it into the depths of political maneuvering).

On another front, I'm doing substantial rewrites on Afterwar because I have seen all these places where my men of action can actually act.

Futurismic didn't want "convoy."

And I'm thinking about expanding "what to do with a thousand lemons" into a bookful of flash fictions with lemon recipes. Is that a good idea?