After finding a plot, cleaning off the desk, uploading my photos, and getting everything ready for the NaNoWriMo contest last night, I decided I wasn’t going to do it. I really want to write another book, but I want to do it at my own pace, and worry about quality more than quotas. Also, I have a couple of small projects I need to juggle, like a trip report for Vegas, and I want to putz with some PHP stuff, and I don’t think I can do that if I’m constantly worrying about output. And there’s not anything in it for me even if I do finish. So, fuck it.

Speaking of photos and PHP, give https://www.rumored.com/vegas/oct-2002/photos/ a spin if you haven’t already. [Long ago broken, sorry.] I am still hacking the PHP code for this, but I got the captions working correctly, and fixed a couple of other errors. It’s my first stab at doing anything longer than a line in PHP, and it seems to work okay. If I can improve some of the features a bit, I will use this script in other places on 34.216.9.77/.

It’s nice to be home on a Friday night with the wind whipping away outside, and the radiators glowing with heat. I bought a dehumidifier on my way home from work for about $40. It has some kind of air filter, a cool mist function, and other assorted features I ignored that promise me better comfort from the air as I sleep. It also came with a mostly useless gauge that measures the humidity (a hydragometer? Hydrometer? Hygrometer?) except it doesn’t have any accurate numbers of markings, just a green band called “comfort zone” in the middle, with “humid” and “dry” in red on either side. It gauged my apartment as being below the “comfort zone”, but now that this little plastic beast is churning out humidity, it appears I am once again in the “comfort zone”. That’s comforting.

Just the other day someone pulled like $3.5M out of the New York horse betting computers through some kind of security breach. Dammit! Why can’t I figure this kind of stuff out?

I’m back. I spent all day yesterday flying, but it wasn’t too terrible. In Vegas, I bought this giant Tom Clancy nonfiction book on the story of the general in charge of the Air Force during Desert Storm. It was a HUGE book, like 500-600 pages but the physical size of a college textbook, and that kept me busy for most of the day. My lunch was at about 10

at Denny’s before I left; my supper was at about 10 at night in the Cincinnati airport’s piece of shit Pizza Hut. I make it back to LaGuardia at about 12, and got a quick cab back to my place.

I now have hot water and heat. Too much heat, actually - the place was like a kiln when I came in last night. I think I need to buy a dehumidifier of some sort. I’m afraid the books will get damaged, but if it is 0% humidity and I jack it up to 30%, I don’t think any harm will be done. The place is a disaster right now: the kitchen is still set up as my imprompu bath room; the living room is filled with books I shuffled from the bedroom floor; two weeks of clean laundry are in a giant pile in the bedroom; and most of my stuff is unpacked (I didn’t bring a lot with me) but I have to get stuff off of the laptop and get the pictures online. So I already have a busy weekend ahead of me. And I am still trying to figure out if I will actually do the NaNoWriMo thing or not. I thought of a good plot yesterday, so maybe I will. But I have so much other shit going on, so I’m not sure if this will be a good time investment.

Okay, gotta eat lunch now…

Hello from Las Vegas. I’m typing from the Internet cafe where I usually log in, at this sort of Korean-oriented strip mall. My laptop has taken a dive, or at least the battery power has, and I cannot get a dial-up connection. But it’s good to be ssh’ed to the computer sitting in my living room in Queens; at least I know it is not without power or under three feet of water.

And no, I did not have heat when I left on Friday, but there was a repair truck outside, and I’m hoping that means it will be fixed by the time I am back tomorrow night.

Many good things sofar. I met Penn and Teller after their show; I saw a Jackson Pollock painting at the Guggenheim (and a bunch of Picasso, Monet, Reubens, and other crap, but the Pollock was the best.); I saw the 250+ car collection at the Imperial Palace, including a TON of cool and famous cars; I hit four aces on a video poker machine on like my third deal, which cashed 60-1 (I quit gambling after that, doesn’t get better than that.); I walked nine miles on Saturday; I saw an IMAX 3-D movie; I saw the movie Jackass twice. (It is the funniest thing I have ever seen.); I ate at In-n-Out and Dennys; I did about 200 other things I can’t think of. I’ll write a story over the weekend.

Bad things: I am sick, although it is almost gone. I am cutting it close on money. Laptop is dead. My feet are pretty torqued out. It is extremely depressing here when you are not busy with something. I wish I could write more about that, but my head would explode. Also, I am getting charged to use this piece of shit, and it’s a BEAUTIFUL day out. So I better split. I’ll be back late tomorrow…

I’m still sick. It’s progressing, and it’s just a cold, but colds tend to completely level me out. And since I have about no immune system, stress makes them worse. Unfortunately, a million and one things all tend to go wrong when I have a cold, which is what I’m currently experiencing.

First, I have no heat and no hot water. I haven’t for three days. Calling the landlord does no good, because he’s - I don’t know where the fuck he is. Italy, I think. Or dead. I’m not sure. He has a son in New Jersey that still cashes the checks and comes over every few weeks, but that’s it. And there’s no super. Which is illegal. So is not having hot water any time of the year, or not having heat during heat season (starts this weekend) or when the temperature is below 50 or something (it was 36 this morning). I called the city today and started the long and drawn out process to get the landlord in trouble. This morning there was a sign on the front door that said “we are repairing the boiler, thank you for your patience.” I don’t know if that means it will be fixed today or it will be fixed in ten years. The other major sticking point is that I don’t have a new lease, and my current lease ends in December. Legally, anyone in a rent-controlled apartment automatically gets their lease renewed unless Bad Things happen, like you run a drug lab or something. But as this motherfucker has no concept of the law, I have extreme fear that I will be looking for a new apartment in December with no money for deposits (i.e. sleeping in a cardboard box.) So that kind of shit certainly adds to your stress level and lowers your ability to fight a cold.

So the last two days my mornings have consisted of putting every pot and pan on the stove, filling them with water, turning on the oven for some heat, and washing in the kitchen sink. The one thing that would really, really help my motherfucking cold would be a half-hour in a hot shower. But no.

Also, I have to fly tomorrow. It’s a little-known fact that taking someone up in a plane with a head cold was ruled a form of inhumane torture by the Geneva Convention in 1947. I did this once before, from Boston to Seattle, and if the doors on a 757 actually opened during flight, I probably would have jumped out DB Cooper-style without a parachute and plummeted to my death instead of facing that horror. As the plane pressurizes or depressurizes or whatever, every individual sinus explodes outward with an incredible force, like someone is driving white-hot steel stakes into your face. And that’s before all of the shit you go through with the ears. One of my ears didn’t actually uncompress until three days later at a doctor’s office, when he shoved some kind of evil death rod into the depths of my ear. It’s not pleasant. I’ll be there tomorrow for a 1PM flight. I plan to drink an entire bottle of nyquil before the flight, and then put in those earplanes ear plugs. Those actually help a lot, they balance the pressure between the inner ear and the cabin. Just don’t buy them at the airport, because they cost twice as much.

I also have tickets to go to this Rush concert tonight ($100) and I really don’t feel like going. But, I know if I don’t go, I will forever regret it. So I will load up on the DayQuil in a few hours and go to MSG and check that out.

I haven’t started packing at all for this trip. I did all of my laundry last night, which was a major bitch, but at least it’s done. I will be very happy in about 30 hours when I am sitting in a nice hotel room with working heat and a working shower and cable TV and nothing else. The main goal right now is to reduce the number of variables from here to there. I’ll feel much better when I’m sitting at the airport gate with my bottle of nyquil in hand, ready for the plane to board…

Ok, I may or may not update after this. If not, be back in a week.

The landlord finally turned on the heat, so I woke up this morning with a cold. The dry heat dried up my nose and throat, and now I’m in the beginning stages of a bug. I fly on Friday, so this sucks. I’m going into full cold prevention mode - tons of vitamins, tons of juice, soup, zinc nasal spray every two hours, the whole deal. I also need to sleep as much as possible, but I’ve got a lot of crap to get done before I leave.

The IRS finally sent me a check for my 2000 taxes. I refiled these recently, and after a lot of runaround, I shook about $300 dollars out of them. This is great, especially right before a trip, but considering they got me for about $1400 earlier, I won’t be singing the praises of the treasury department any time soon.

I spent most of the weekend picking at this book of short stories, which really needs a name. It’s at about 40,000 words, so I’m slowly making progress. It’s strange to be writing about 1994 like it was ancient history, but it’s nice because I kept a journal then and I can check a few of my facts. Unfortunately, I’m finding that my old journals are not that well-written. Instead of spending time writing about what was happening in the present, I went on a lot about how I wanted to get the hell out of Bloomington.

I think I’m too out of it to write. I just looked at a packet of crackers and could have sworn they said “online crackers”, when they actually said “saltine crackers”.