Wet Wet Wet

Meters swum today: None. 1700 yesterday.
Playing in the background: Uh, nothing, at the moment. Just the fan.

The winter rains have pounced on Dallas. It's been raining on and off for a week and raining steadily for the last two days (though it seems to have stopped for the time being). What a great week for my parents to visit, they'll be here today at two. Oh well. In this pause between the deep freeze and the blast furnace that the naive among us call "spring", we gotta be grateful for what we get, even if, all together now, "it doesn't make a dent in our current drought," as the weather guy says over and over and over and over and over. Why does he say that? He always does. Maybe there's this pathological terror that if he doesn't say it, everybody in town will walk out into the middle of the rainstorm and, I dunno, turn the sprinklers on full blast or something.

It's been fabulous for my garden, though. Yes, I've made an attempt at a garden. We have peas, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onions, cilantro - an entire salad, really, all going great guns. Except the celery. Haven't heard anything from the celery. I'll post a picture as soon as I figure out how to work Joan's cell phone camera.

Oh, and I have good news on the unemployment front. Despite certain shortsighted gubernatorial posturing, I am indeed eligible for the COBRA reduction in premium thanks to Pres. Obama. This means my COBRA payments are about $150 a month, which beats hell out of four hundred and something. Hey, Tracy, this means you too are eligible. Remind me to show you my documentation so you can show up at the office, present it to you-know-who and demand equity.

The other good news is that the logjam in my brain has finally given way and some chapters of Soulmender are getting written. I dunno if I've been filling you guys in on this, but with the first two it was like I couldn't stop writing and this time it's like I can't get started. Sally (Hi, Sally!) suggested it had something to do with this being the Last One, the long story about to get wrapped up and all that, and me not wanting to go there just yet. Which may be. For some reason, though, I got this idea that Roland, my bad guy, liked classical music, which led to this bizarre mental image of Roland listening to Handel's Hallelujah Chorus in an underground bunker during a remodel.

Don't ask me where that came from, but if I had to guess, I'd say it probably has something to do with this video, sent to me by Uncle Bob, and my recent experiences with power tools. Well, whatever, it broke the logjam and things are rolling again. I have lots of free time at the moment, might as well get some writing done. Yes, there you have it folks. The next time Stephen King asks you over to dinner and you ask him where he gets his ideas and he says something sarcastic like "Utica," know that he's fooling you. The truth is that he gets his ideas from viral videos and power tool accidents. Or at least I do.

Okay, I'll go look for work now. King of Kings! And Lord Of Lords! Hallelujah, Amen!