I had this dream Monday night that I had some kind of weird, parasitic, fungal growth under my fingernails. These little black dots, like tiny seedlings, were growing in a sort of paisley pattern that sort of reminded me of some sort of henna tattoo. But it was UNDER the nail, and was fucking FREAKING ME OUT. Any kind of fungal growth like that really bothers me. A friend of mine once told me she had some kind of infection or bacteria on her tonsils, and it was growing like little flowers on the back of her throat and it FREAKED ME OUT for like a YEAR. So I was going apeshit in the dream, trying to stick an x-acto knife under my nails to scrape away the stuff, and considering just going to the hospital and having them peel back my nails and then wear band-aids for weeks until they grew back. I was in a total frenzy, a shiver running through all of my skin, every pore itching every time I looked at my nails and saw these little creatures living under there.

I woke up, and looked at my clock, and it was about an hour until the alarms went off, so I turned on my desk light, and looked at my fingers, and THE FUCKING STUFF WAS UNDER MY NAILS!!

Then I really woke up. Holy shit, I hate dreams like that.

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The Boston trip is planned and ready to roll, although I am no longer taking the last-minute special through Delta because they wanted to screw me into paying double for a hotel because I was traveling alone. So now I have another hotel booked, and I am taking the bus there, which only costs like $20 but involves four hours of sitting in a bus. I’ll bring a book, a gameboy, and the iPod.

What am I doing there, someone asked? John Sheppard is reading on August 1st. You can read more about the reading here. I am tempted to sign up for the open mic before the reading and rattle off a few pages of Rumored, but I don’t know if I will or not. Maybe, though. I will also be meeting up with a couple of other friends from IU, and I also want to check out the USS Constitution and USS Cassin Young, which are both a stone’s throw from my hotel. And I want to enjoy being out of New York for a long weekend.

Not much else to report, just playing Tribes: Aerial Assault constantly, and trying not to think about bugs under my fingernails.

It’s been absolutely fucking unbearable here, heatwise. I spent most of yesterday sitting in bed with a fan pointed at me, reading and passing in and out of sleep. I managed to get out of the house today for a haircut, some shopping at St. Marks (including Toy Tokyo and Kim’s) and a late lunch of breakfast at Kiev. I also went to Barnes and Noble and got a book on Boston, so I won’t be completely lost when I get there on Thursday.

I’ve been to Boston twice already, both times at the end of ‘95. Both times were for work, when I was at CompuServe, and both times I was there for a week for a trade show. I had fun both trips, although on the first one, over Halloween, I got really sick and had to fly home with a full-on head cold, which became the absolute worst pain I’ve ever endured in my life. But both times, I saw a good amount of the city, although most of it was spent zipping around in cabs with people who knew more about the general geography, so I have no idea which way is up. But now my new book has a map, and I should be able to get around a bit better.

My memories of that whole era, the first six months of Seattle, are far enough back that I only remember mostly good things. I spent all of my time hacking on my first two books, I didn’t have a TV, I didn’t have any money, and I tried to do a lot to find out more about the new-to-me Emerald City. Most of that involved spending the last few bucks after car payments and rent to go to Elliot Bay books, buy whatever Bukowski I didn’t have, and go to whatever book signing they had. I remember meeting Barry Gifford, Richard Rhodes, and Kay Jamison within a month of each other in the basement of that old bookstore. And when I didn’t walk down to Pioneer Square, I would drive north and south on I-5, going up to see movies at Mountlake Terrace and wandering around the Northgate mall.

I just realized I have a shitload of travel books, both of places I’ve been and places I’ve wanted to visit. I wish I could visit each of the places I have a book for; it would be cool to go to Japan, Amsterdam, New Orleans. I don’t think I am taking any more big trips this year, although I am going to Vegas and probably taking one more long weekend. But next year, I’d like to roll all of my tax money into plane tickets and hit a lot of places.

I just watched the movie Sneakers, which is probably one of my favorite movies of all time. It has a nice, twisty plot, and even with the fake crypto technology subplot, it’s a very memorable and fun movie. I actually saw it in the theater three different times with three different dates when it was playing in Bloomington back in 1992. It’s another piece of proof that maybe that year was my high water mark, as I could get three different dates inside of a month or so, and I don’t think I’ve dated three different people in the last three years. Anyway, the movie reminded me of that era, not only in reference to who I saw it with, but also the look of things. The toy company-slash-enemy hideout is decorated in that early nineties tech look that existed in Lindley Hall and other newly remodeled buildings when I was on campus.

Not much is up here. I have been borderline sick all week, so I haven’t been in the mood to write. I’ve been falling asleep after work, eating dinner late, having the whole evening collapse onto itself, and then oversleeping in the morning. It’s a bad pattern, and hard to break. I slept for almost three hours after work tonight, but luckily, it’s Saturday tomorrow (today) and I’ll be able to sleep in. I have planned another weekend of nothing, except maybe getting work done on this (still untitled) book.

I’m very tired and it is almost 2

AM, so I better split.

I haven’t been writing in here much because I’ve been working on a new book. And I can’t talk about the new book because that would jinx it. But it’s going well, it’s getting there. And now I have a sore throat, so I’m expecting a cold and full shutdown some time this week. Some people can function fine on a cold, but it completely devastates me, and makes even the most simple daily routine difficult.

Got a whole new bundle of books from Amazon, but they are all at the office. I’m trying to finish up the 4-book Asimov trilogy, and just got done with book three. All of the other stuff I got is history, military. Good stuff.

I’m trying to run every day. It’s boring at first, and the boredom is pretty much my limitation now, moreso than shin splints or cardio. I just got a CD of running cadences recorded at Camp Pendleton, so you can march along with the Recon Marines. It’s actually pretty fun to march along with the CD, although my stupid portable CD player that advertises a 48-second skip buffer lasts about three good strides before skipping. I just zapped it all to the iPod, so hopefully that will work better.

OK, time to sleep…

I have been doing nothing but eating pizza, drinking lots of Coke, and listening to this Hammerfall CD over and over and over and over. It is the best CD in the world. I’m sure I’ll be bored of it in a week.

I started writing a new book. It is like Rumored to Exist but way more offensive and it has more of a linear story. That is all I can tell you for now. But it will be cool.

I am going to see John Sheppard read in Boston on August 1st, and you should go if you have the means. There is a remote chance that I will actually read from Rumored to Exist, but it depends on my blood alcohol level at the time. Oh, and I bought tickets to go to Vegas on October 24-29. I have no idea where I am staying. If there is even a remote chance that you want to go to Vegas, you should go with me. Or bank up your change and go in January when I’m sure my cohorts will try to get me to throw up in another four-star restaurant.