Fall arrives slowly here in Texas. “Cold fronts” come in, reducing the temperatures to the 70s and 80s, lulling us into the misguided notion that summer is over. Then, in October, it all goes poof. The heat index today could well hit 109° locally. Yuck.
I brushed up Chapter One of the novel this morning and e-mailed it to my agent. Though he’s seen the entire novel, this is the first time he’s seen this new scene, so I’m curious to here what he thinks about it.
At breakfast this morning, the two young gentlemen in front of me at the bagel shop were in the process of having their debit card declined. How embarrassing, I thought, both for the buyers and the young clerk behind the counter who had to deliver the news. I’ve never understood how people have gotten into the habit of using credit/debit cards for trifling purchases. Must be a generational thing. Anyhow, the credit card machine apparently threw up a 1-800 number to be called. The young men decided they could make the call and made tracks. When I was leaving, over half an hour later, I found a charge card on the ground outside the entrance. (I’m surprised no one else noticed it–it was in plain sight and numerous people must have passed it.) I took it in to the cashier and they recognized the card (which bore a woman’s name, I noted) as being the same one they’d rejected earlier.
I received my contributor copies of Inhuman magazine last night. A handsome little digest with lots of stuff I look forward to reading in due course. It’s been so long since I wrote my essay for this publication that I was able to read it last night almost as if it came from someone else. I also learned via a circuitous route (most definitely not from the editor) that an anthology that was to feature one of my short stories has been canceled. Hardly something so grand as cancelation–withered from attrition, more like. The cover art was done, the TOC listed, I think even pre-orders were accepted. I was paid for the story, too, though I don’t believe that was the case for all contributors. Anyhow, it is a dead project, so the story goes back into circulation.
“When you don’t have any power, you have to delay things.” That seemed to be the thematic statement from this week’s episode of Mad Men. It was really good to see Don and Betty enjoying some time together, because they have been so estranged of late. The scene in the café in Rome where the two guys were hitting on Betty until Don came up and pretended to seduce her was great. And poor Pete. He never learns.
This week’s Dexter continued to show the program’s strengths. Dexter is always spinning plates, trying to balance everything in his life. As his father said, “You have a family to support, people to dismember.” The missing body was one of his worst crises yet, but he managed to skate by yet again.
Last night’s episode of The Big Bang Theory must have been one of the funniest yet. It’s usually Two and a Half Men that makes me laugh out loud, but this week it was the parallel stories of Sheldon “training” Penny through positive reinforcement, and Walowitz and Raj’s night out at the goth club.
