I’m thankful to be trusted as a friend and confidant by people I care about and admire.

I’m thankful that I was able to sleep in a little bit this morning.

I’m thankful to have a friend like Mari who trusts me to mind her cat and her game consoles for a week or so. (Dark Cloud 2? The jury’s still out on that one…)

I’m thankful for the guy who yelled across the street at me that I’d just missed my bus and suggested I get on the one heading the other direction instead. He turned out to be a strange guy who liked making a gun shape with his hand and yelling “Pow!” at passing cars, but he was helpful when it counted. I got to the house a lot faster than I would have otherwise, and spent a lot less time freezing my buttocks.

I’m thankful to live in Portland, Oregon, even if it is going through some rough times lately. We still have one of the better municipal mass transit systems in the country, and you just can’t beat the combination of mountains, rivers and greenery that you find here.

I’m thankful, speaking of those rough times, to be gainfully employed doing something that I’m reasonably good at, at a company that generally allows me to go about my job in whatever fashion I see fit.

I’m thankful for Blender, which I finally got installed on a computer for Alex’s use. Within an hour he was turning out some imaginative stuff, including a short clip involving a tube that vacuums the “eyes” and “nose” off the face of a cylindrical creature. Damn, that boy’s clever and talented.

I’m thankful, speaking of which, for Alex and Erica. The experience of being a father has made me a better man in so many ways, and they constantly enrich my life just by being the excellent young persons that they are.

I’m thankful, still, for Wendi. Even if we ended up falling apart, the last decade wasn’t all bad, dammit.

I’m thankful that my in-laws can tolerate my presence, considering everything that’s happened.

I’m thankful to be happily full of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and pumpkin pie.

I’m thankful that I have a number of really wonderful people in my life, friends and family alike. Thank you, one and all.

I’m even thankful to be me. Today, I can do that. Who knows, maybe I’ll start a trend or something.

We’re all entitled to an occasional lapse in judgement. How about we all just pretend that the previous (now-unavailable) entry never happened? It was a phenomenally bad idea, really. Bad form. I should know better. I’m sorry.

Friends don’t trick friends. Period.

Yesterday morning Mari picked me up along with my luggage so I could begin my stay at her apartment. I’m minding the place while she and Doug are vacationing with her folks in California, you see. It shouldn’t be too strenuous a job: make sure the cat is fed, that sort of thing.

The afternoon and evening were spent hanging out and watching movies with the likes of Celina and Kirsten, making it a real #KNRK chat channel get-together. Until last night I’d never seen Fight Club, by the way. It’s an interesting movie, but I probably won’t go out of my way to watch it again. Not my style, you know?

I’ll probably update rather infrequently, for various reasons. It’s a holiday week for starters. And then there’s those video games to waste time with… who needs the Internet?

Right. Like I was updating all that frequently to begin with. I know. Well, be good humans. I’ll post as I get the urge…

‘Twas a bit damp out this morning on the way to work. What started out as cold rain with some white stuff mixed into it quickly became a slush storm. In fact, you could call it…

The Great Slush Storm of 2003!

That is, if you were thinking like a local news organization. Which I don’t advise, personally.

Anyway, I was walking to work from the bus stop and as I walked underneath the Ross Island Bridge I realized that it was a perfect place from which to snap pictures:

Neat, huh? Mind you, it made the walk to work sort of interesting. See, I didn’t think to put on my “bad weather” shoes. Whoops. I didn’t fall, but I did slip a few times.

Nevermind that my umbrella kept getting heavier and heavier. At one point I thought, “Why is my arm getting so tired?”

“Oh yeah. Duh.”

So, what’s the weather like in your neck of the woods, eh? I bet it’s not as much fun as this today!

To save energy, I’m just going to repost what I wrote on the NaNoWriMo forums just now:

Sorry, folks. I won last year, but this time I’m merely a “participant.”

There’s a very nice and intelligent man, my ex-wife’s father and my childrens’ grandfather, who’s laying in a hospital room right now on a morphine drip because the cancer has eaten so much of his spine that he’s in constant and excruciating pain. If that wasn’t enough, I have two significant personal events this month, and work projects of significance are due to land any day now.

In all this, I find that my priorities must be reestablished. I can’t take care of what’s important if I’m tired, stressed and have sore fingers from hours spent typing every day and night.

In a weird sort of way it’s a relief, since I find that my technique for streamlining the generation of wordcount has left me within a few days’ writing of the end of my story. Well, what would I do then? I don’t know, and what’s more I don’t want to have to figure it out. It’s only a contest with myself to produce 50,000 words, and I’ve done that before. I learned some lessons, and that was my main goal this year. Mind you, they weren’t the lessons I thought I’d be learning, but life is often that way.

I shall cheer you all onward to whatever goals you’ve set for yourselves. Will I do this again next year? Maybe not. You see, one of the things I learned this time is that if I want to tell the stories in my head, the printed word may not be my best medium…

Hear ye, hear ye.

Saturday, 8 November 2003, shall be henceforth and forthwith and forthforth and hencewith known as Happy Lilith Day.

That will be all.