December 2003

Fried. Mental survival due to Lee, Ray, hot chocolate, and loud music over the headphones at work.

Word Count. Finally finished typing in the last pages of the book. Final count for first draft is 483 pages, with a true word-count of 93,641 words and an estimated word count (manuscript-formatted pages * 250) of 120,750 words. And so, so much work to do.

Book Review. Watching My Language, by William Safire. William Safire writes a column for the New York Times on language. This is a collection of them. The main thing that I’m taking away from this book is the idea that grammar isn’t fixed, constant, or even consistent from expert to expert. Yes, it’s possible to

I killed my bonsai tree. Not on purpose. Maybe that’s all that needs to be said.

Zen and Sex. You may want to skip this post. I’ve been reading a zen book to de-stress; more on that later. Some thoughts: The author talks about light and darkness. Light is a metaphor for the things we see with our intellect–the example he uses is a meal. We prepare separate dishes with separate