Author: jkonrath

I’ve been working on Summer Rain. I hesitate to say that I’m working on it full time, but I have no other productive items going (except for a pay gig, which is part-time.) I am making progress towards wrapping up the final third, but it’s going slow on a couple of chapters. I try to keep a regular schedule, wordcount-wise, but this one chapter is just killing me. I worked all day on it, and I must’ve written like 1500 words. Sometimes I would write less than 100 words an hour, and I wasn’t off playing Pac-man or whatever – I was seriously sitting at the computer for 60 full minutes, struggling with how to develop this motherfucking chapter. It’s because this deals with sex, and the character doesn’t get any for most of the book, and I am not a romance author or whatever, so it’s all uphill. I’ll get through it, hopefully. But the book is getting better, and I’m excited about it, and I hope I can show it to a few people sometime soon.

I’m also still working on the travel thing about the WA->NY trip. It’s getting done, but it’s also going slow. There are only so many ways you can describe driving through the desert. But I got the pictures back – 5 rolls – and they look great. Maybe I will scan a few and post them also.

Today’s weather was beautiful – 70’s, sunny. I went for a walk for about an hour, which got me in the mood for Summer Rain. I’m hoping for many more days like this.

I am going to get back to writing this travel stuff, before I need to crash. Feel free to email me and bug me about it – maybe it will help me finish faster.

Isn’t it weird when the song in your walkman and the stuff around you coincidentally match for a moment? I was listening to Dream Theater’s latest while walking to the drug store in the rain, and on the last song there is this repeated line: “It’s raining, raining, on the streers of New York City.” I guess you’d need to know the song, but the soaked cityscape of 181st and Broadway could’ve made a perfect video for the song.

Today I’ve found my new hobby: recording music. Marie has a Tascam 4-track and a Yamaha keyboard that were gathering dust. So I got out my bass and my cable collection and set up a little studio on the living room floor. I have almost no musical ability, and just spent the afternoon playing bass lines on top of the built-in drum rhythms. It’s a lot of fun, and a decent way to practice. Plus I’m now remembering a tiny bit of my ten year old piano lessons, so maybe I’ll learn more.

Still no writing, aside from some work on the travel thing. Maybe tomorrow. For now, the Daily Show…

It looks like if I type late at night, I can almost see what I type. I don’t know what’s going on with this, and I don’t know if it’s really a fiber cut or very shitty service. But things work fine in getting back to my speakeasy account, so I many need to come up with some new scheme for writing these entries.

I’ve found from updating my paper journal that I’m sick of updating things with entries like “I went to the K-Mart. I went to the grocery” etc. Things are going good here, and I’ve had a ton of errands to do, but it’s too tedious to present a laundry list of these idiotic events. I’m doing okay in setting up shop though, and I’m sort of writing now – trying to write a huge account of everything that happened on the trip. It’s going very slow, and the story hasn’t even finished up the first of 14 days. But I’m waiting for the day when this will all pick up and I’ll blow through 4, 5, or 6 days at a clip.

I’m about underway on a freelance writing gig for an old friend from college. Go check out itList.com. [Long dead, sorry.] It’s an online bookmark manager, a way to post, share, or centrally manage all of your bookmarks. The current interface is pretty basic, but there are cool things afoot, with new programs and a totally new interface. I’ll be writing some help for it, which will be a very fun experience. Plus it’ll bring in a couple of bucks to support my new fulltime-writer lifestyle.

Although my connection is fast, I’m not in the mood to write. The Nintendo 64 is back, so if nothing’s on the tube, I’ll get into some Diddy Kong Racing or something. More later.

It appears I’m still suffering from a slow connection to my server, possibly from a fiber cut yesterday. Maybe it has already been fixed and my connection will always be slow. I’m not sure, but for now it means it’s impossible to do any worthwhile updates.

I’ve spent the whole day running errands, and I didn’t even leave the house until fourish. There’s still a lot of unpacking, setting up, and other miscellaneous work. Plus I had to fill prescriptions, deal with banks, and dig through luggage to find things. I guess I didn’t do as much as I planned, but some stuff is happening.

And I started writing today. Actually, my first test run just showed me that I had a lot of work to do at my writing area. I started writing, got about 3 words in, and then realized that I had to readjust stuff, or find my scrap paper notebook, or look for a pen, or whatever. Eventually, I got enough done that I could write for maybe an hour, which is decent. I’m trying to write all of the trip stories down, but it’s going slow. Maybe next week will provide for some better working conditions.

Speaking of which, I have more to do, so I better split.

I’m here – New York that is. It also appears I have the slowest connection in the world to this server, so it looks like I either need to yell at the new ISP or find a way to do this writing on my home machine and then FTP it in, like the rest of the people out there do.

This connection is completely useless, so I need to cut this short. I’ll be writing a comprehensive report on the trip soon, and hopefully I’ll get this connectivity problem fixed by then. Until then, drop me a line.

04/15/99 21:25

It looks like it isn’t the new ISP’s fault that I can’t type. There was some sort of fiber cut today that affected pair.com, the folks that host my site. Things appear somewhat better, although it’s not a zippy connection.

I now have a computer table – one of those folding tables from Staples. And I am getting more set up here. Soon I will type in an account of my entire trip, I promise. Until then, I have to answer lots of mail and keep unpacking. More later…

This should be my last entry from Seattle. Unfortunately it won’t be a great one, because I am sick, running a fever, having stomach problems, still have a lot of packing to do, and I leave in only 12 hours. If there is any one sure thing in life, it’s that I will get sick right before a trip. It looks like I will be seeing the great southwest in a dayquil haze now.

I got the rental car thismorning. It is an Oldsmobile Intrigue, in old-person white paint. It has auto-everything, and will be a real rest to drive it. It’s quite a bit different than the rabbit, which had manual-everything, except for the things that just didn’t work. I already took it for a test drive up to Lynnwood and back, and it seems great. I don’t know how good of mileage it gets, but the needle barely wavered int the 40-something miles I drove, so hopefully that will be OK.

Almost everything is packed. I am backing up the computer, and then it gets powered down. The apartment looks REALLY vacant now, just my air mattress and a bunch of piles of stuff awaiting the car or the dumpster.

I was going to write some kind of great ending at this point, but I’m trying not to get too sentimental about Seattle. I just want to get this shit in my car and get it behind me and think about it later. The cold isn’t helping me either. So I’m going to cut this short while I can still type. Maybe I’ll type in some entries from the road. If not, you’ll get the whole story when I reach New York on the 16th or so. Keep in touch, and wish me luck.

The VW is gone. I turned over the title for a mere $100 to someone who answered my usenet ad. It’s the end of an era. At least this time, the person buying it intends to fix it up and keep it on the road. When I sold my last Rabbit, the frame was rusted through and the brakes were gone. The guy who bought it, also for $100, intended to use it as a parts donor for other stuff. This one went to a kid who worked at a Jiffy Lube and wanted to put in a bigger stereo and do other stuff to it. So, I hope it went to a good home. It served me well.

I’m trying not to get sentimental about this stupid shit. I’ve got a pile of junk awaiting the dumpster, including a comforter (you know, bed sheet) that I got for christmas 92. The pattern reminds me so much of the past, the different houses and beds on which it rested from 1992-1997. It reminds me so much of a certain ex-girlfriend, of the last era of the Mitchell Street house, and of my first years here in Seattle. Luckily, it smells like hell from being in storage, or I’d be sniffing it and thinking even more. This is what my life has been like lately: throwing out things that need to go in the trash, even though they are instant time machines to events and memories of my past.

Bill Perry is here, and just got back from a trip to Japan. He’d been awake for about 24 hours straight, but gained a day on the return flight. I went to Chang’s Mongolian Grill with him and Duffin. It was the last trip I made with the car, which I guess is a good way to end things.

I hate to say it, but I feel like I’m getting sick. I don’t know, I was moving stuff on my balcony and kicked up a lot of smog dust, so maybe I’m just coughing that back up. But I would hate to get bronchitis the day before this fucking trip. I already know my digestive system will massively rebel an hour before I’m scheduled to leave – that’s a given. I think that some kind of hypnotism or aversion therapy might make these medical problems go away. I know that I occassionally use a meditation tape for depression, and it actually works fairly well when I’m trying to fall asleep and 80,000 things are going through my head. I doubt there’s a similar tape for respiratory infections, though.

It seems like there was something else I had to write about, but I’ve got to haul some more garbage downstairs, and then try to go to bed early. I’m not going anywhere tomorrow without a car, so I’m sure I’ll write more then.

Very tired. I did more cleaning, and tried to do some trip planning – maps, directions, etc. I think a GPS is going to help a lot. I’ve also been working on Summer Rain, but I ended up doing some structural changes, continuity things. I didn’t add many words, but I fixed some problems.

I should sleep. I think I breathed in a bunch of smog dust and now I’m coughing like I have TB. Anyone who thinks Seattle has clean air should check out my patio. That’s all for now.

How long has it been since I’ve updated? Everything’s been a blur of either going to UPS or hauling crap down to the dupster. I have one last trip to UPS, and that’s to send off my stereo. Otherwise, everything’s going into the trash or my car, with the exception of a few things that others might snag. The place is starting to look very empty, but now the mad rush of cleaning, scrubbing, and vacuuming needs to start.

I have allegedly sold my car, for $100. I say allegedly because I have it until Sunday night, when the sale takes place, and there’s always a chance it will fall through. But it will be gone, and I guess I’m a little sad. It’s a piece of shit, and it’s starting to develop problems, but it reminds me so much of my old VW, the one from 91-92, and there’s so much nostalgia behind that old heap. I won’t miss driving in Seattle – don’t believe anything you hear, Seattle’s transportation situation sucks balls in a major way. And don’t believe that there’s a public transit system here, because there isn’t. I won’t go into that now, though. The car – I will miss it. I should take some pictures tomorrow. I would take it for a nice two hour drive, but that only gets me about 5 miles from my house.

Almost every Friday night, when nothing’s going on, I drive to the Denny’s right off of 520 in Bellevue for dinner. I eat alone, write a bunch, and then drive to the Barnes and Noble over by Bellvue Square Mall and shop for books. Sometimes I also hit the Tower Records there, and on the way back, I go to Safeway for junk food and various caffiene. Then I get home and write. This has been a tradition since I first got to Seattle. I didn’t know where any other B&N or Denny’s was, so I would go out there. And I’ve done this on and off for about four years.

So it hit me that today was my last Friday in Seattle, and I had no other plans, so I decided I needed to do this again. On the way over, driving across 520 in the dark and listening to the last Queensryche album, it really sunk in that it’s almost over here. I guess all week I’ve been so busy with packing and thinking “I’ve got another week,” and then it was suddenly Friday. I’ve got the weekend, then Monday and Tuesday are eaten up by cleaning activities, getting the rental car, and maybe saying bye to a couple of people. But then, I’m on the road. It was an almost scary thought, as I sat there in Denny’s eating one of those awful skillet things and scribbling in my notebook.

Everyone keeps asking me if I will miss Seattle. I thought about this today while driving around Northgate, listening to the aforementioned Queensryche album. That tape reminds me so much of the apex of my Seattle experience, which was probably when it came out – late spring of 97. It reminds me so much of driving around in my old 94 Escort, I can pretty much smell the new car smell and plastic interior, and feel the power steering and plush bucket seats. I drove so much then, down to Longview every other weekend, listening to that tape over and over. It was when I was pulling out of debt, and actually had a few bucks left over on the day before payday. It’s not that I miss the situations or the people as much as the general aura, the feel that I’ll always get when I listen to that album.

I guess I didn’t answer my question. But, it’s hard to explain. I miss all of the places I’ve lived, even the horrible ones, for different reasons. And I wouldn’t want to go back to them today, but the memories are great. And I guess that’s what will happen with Seattle.

I’ve gotta hit the hay. I’ve been trying to push back the sleep schedule so I can leave at 6am on Weds. I’m waking up at about 9 now, so I should be able to make it. We’ll see.