Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Waxing Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Sunny and pleasant

Some good news:

“Time and Place” (as Christy Miller) is the feature story this week on Espresso Fiction.

It took me two years to crack that market – it’s one of the three markets in my GDR list that I really wanted to achieve – and now I have. I’m very excited.

I’ll be even happier when the check arrives.

I think one of the reasons I’m so cranky, unusually cranky, even for me, is because I’m fighting some sort of bug. Something’s just not right and I feel off.

Well, there’s nothing I can do about it, except shut up and deal.

Unfortunately, the way our country’s lack of health conscience care system is set up, when you’re actually sick, you don’t get to take off work and get well. Instead, you are forced to go out into the world, for financial and other reasons, to get worse and make other people sick, too. A sensible sick day program would help companies keep more employees actually healthy and productive.

Gas prices are up to $2.85 a gallon in my area for regular, and bound to hit $3 soon. Yet the oil companies continue to make their billions, and Congress does nothing. Of course, there are plenty of people who can get rid of their gas guzzlers in the first place. A family with four kids in sports needs an SUV – that family needs a locker room on wheels. People who live in areas of rough terrain need vehicles that can handle it. But I know, in my area, there are plenty of pampered suburban housewives who have fulltime nannies and cleaning people and trainers and shoppers and everything else. Yet, they drive around in their SUVs all day, talking (illegally) on their cell phones. Of course, it’s not like they actually have to pay – their husbands who actually work for a living do.

It’s the mothers who actually take care of their own kids and who are often working as well as raising kids who suffer. And these are the families who so desperately need to take a vacation who have to give it up – all so some fat cat oil exec can build another McMansion, fill it with gaudy faux antiques, and indulge his wife, his drug-addled kids, and his mistresses.

And Bush just nods and smiles and lets it happen.

I miss the 100 Days already; I’m trying to still do meditation anyway. Today, I’m feeling out of sorts, cranky, in pain, angry, and off, so the whole sitting thing didn’t work so well. Maybe I can do “train meditation”.

Yes, I found I can actually use the time to meditate on the train. Especially if it’s an express and not stopping every three or four minutes. If it gets into a regular rhythm (i.e., when we have a driver who doesn’t surge ahead and then hit the brakes constantly – hate that), the train’s rhythm underscores the meditation and becomes soothing.

Off to the theatre today. I’m going in early, so I can hit Coliseum when I get off the train, and get those books which have gnawed at me since Sunday.

Tomorrow, if I’m not on set, it’s back to painting. No matter how I feel.

And today, let’s try to write a few sentences, shall we?

Devon