wednesday . september . eight . nineteen ninety nine had a call from a prospective publisher waiting for me on the answering machine last night. i listened to the message twice and spent the rest of the evening glancing lovingly at the slip of paper upon which i wrote their phone number. i kept turning to paul and saying "oh, by the way, i have to call my publisher in the morning. you know, my publisher who called today? they want me to call them tomorrow, what with my book being something they want, and all." poor paul. he started out as genuinely pleased and hopeful for me as is humanly possible. because i am so manic and obsessive i ended up bludgeoning him into tight lipped grins and flaccid "that's great honey"s with my relentless ranting. before i could return the call this morning, they called me back. oh yeah, i'm beaming. it was the president's secretary. he wants to know if the manuscript is still available. i had to keep myself from saying "of course it is...who'd want it?" so i'm sending them a copy this week. secretary was honest and told me not to expect to hear anything for a couple of months. we shall see. -- last night paul fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow and i was reading in bed a bit. i started to fall asleep too, so i asked paul to shut off the light. (ahh, marriage!) he did so and we snuggled in bed and dozed for a few minutes before he said: "oh! i see you've won the free slurpee!" : - 0 i was kinda stunned, but managed to mutter "i'm sorry??" he paused and said with a dismissive shrug "7-11 talk". my GOD, i love that man. -- saturday . september . eighteen . nineteen ninety nine ok, ok... i haven't been writing this week. i got busy. so, in order to make it up to the three people that actually read this page, here is an amusing dog shit story: i was working today designing some covers for a few rare videos we just got. i was sitting in the comfy customer chair next to the gigantic and ancient big bird doll who, on a good day, looks like he's been mainlining heroin straight into his genitals. one of our regulars came in with his puppy. this is a super cute and extremely hyper dog. he spends most of his time in the store running circles around the comedy section. the customer eventually picked out his movies and escorted the pup out the door. about four minutes later, the worker girl (a new, shy and super nice employee) stopped in the middle of the store and started to sniff at the air around her. worker girl: um. is it possible i'm smelling dog poo? mr. obsessive/compulsive: i think so. i smell it too. i bet it was spaz puppy. worker girl.: there was time to poop during all that running? i was blissfully unaware of the odor, but off they went in search of doggie-doo. mr. o/c looked in the front and suddenly, worker girl appeared from the back and said "oh yeah. i found it. ALL of it." apparently there had been some kind of canine fecal smear incident that they then rushed off to clean. i was going to get up and check it out, but i heard mr. o/c kind of gag, so i passed.