9:32 PM, Wednesday evening. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three...Mmm, it’s all flash and rumble.*
--- JWR, 7/22/98
Continue reading Flash and Rumble.
July 1998 Archives
7:50 PM, Tuesday evening. Salamander.
The humidity here is big and ponderous. It wraps snugly around you and sinks into your pores like heavy syrup. The sky is hazy -- no real sun, just milky light. Now I appreciate air-conditioning, don’t get me wrong, but I also have to say:
I like the heat.
I’m the kind of person who gets cold easily -- and then stays that way. It doesn’t take much to start me shivering. On the other hand, I tolerate heat very well. When I go to the beach I like to lay out on my blanket (which features the incredibly manly pattern of dinosaurs in swim trunks and shades frolicking along some prehistoric shore) and just bask in the light and heat.
Getting a tan doesn’t really concern me. I like to lay back, close my eyes, and submerge into that golden (almost liquid) warmth...
Can you tell that I’ve been thinking about my up-coming vacation to Myrtle Beach?
Today I was out buying suntan lotion and other beach-related stuff for the vacation. I also finally broke down and bought myself a new camera. I got a Canon Elph and I think that little gem is about the coolest thing since sliced bread. It is, honest-to-God, smaller than my wallet. Yet the Elph features a 2x zoom lens, flash (with built-in red eye reduction lamp) and a spiffy stainless steel body. It is an APS camera, so I can take regular sized pictures as well as wide-angle and panoramic shots, all on the same roll of film. I probably definitely can’t afford the thing but sometimes you just have to live in the moment and trust the future to shake out favorably on its own.
What the heck, maybe the impending credit card bill will supply the impetus (or the crack of that work-ethic whip) that I need to write and sell some new fiction.
"Carpe diem," says the salamander...
--- JWR, 7/7/98
9:16 PM, Thursday evening. According to The Kid’s Corner column in my local newspaper, there are "basically three types of skunks: striped, spotted and hog-nosed." I think that’s pretty cool -- but it’s the basically in that sentence that is really intriguing. Somewhere, there are skunks that don’t fit into those three main types. Neither striped, spotted nor hog-nosed (or perhaps all that and more).
Somewhere there are super-deluxe skunks, man...
I’ve been getting a fair amount of stuff done this week. At the moment, I have four short stories and three poems ready to be mailed out to various markets. I’ve also selected a new publisher to try my novel at -- maybe the third time will be a charm.
Next Friday (July 10th) I’ll be heading down to Myrtle Beach with my brother, Joel, and a bunch of friends. We’ve been making the trip for five years now and, as always, I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be cool to lay back on some warm soft sand, sip an ice-cold margarita, swim in the surf...maybe catch a band at the House of Blues. I might also get a chance to see my friend Julia again, which would be most excellent.
Mmm, eight days and counting...
For a while now I have been experimenting with new designs and layouts for my website. My most recent creations haven’t really popped my cork, though. I like simplicity and clean design, small graphics and quick pages -- but if you take that too far things just get way too bland looking. Perusing my latest experiment (reposing on my hard drive) I’ve realized that I want something with a lot more pizzazz. Until I can get that sort of buzz from a new design the site will stay pretty much as you see it.
But I’ll keep experimenting.
I wonder what a super-deluxe skunk motif would look like?
--- JWR, 7/2/98