Blogging at Starbucks

Now here's something I haven't done for a while. With my first netbook, I was here all the time because we hadn't set up our DSL home network yet but now I stay home and use that. In the basement office, believe it or not, I still have dial up! At any rate, I'm here to escape a house guest who is as slow to get started in the morning as H is. Tired of tiptoeing around the house when it's past 7,

Have an MFA novel to read in the next couple weeks, prior to the student defense. Mostly that sort of thing is automatic but one of my best screenwriting students was a grad student whose novel got rejected by a committee member. Virtually unheard of. Rather out of desperation, I think, she switched to screenwriting for her thesis and ended up being a first rate screenwriter, even optioning her first script and with another almost selling to Danny DeVito except for bad timing. A superb writer. But also a slow writer, as many are, which makes the career a bit harder to establish. It's a numbers game and the more scripts you can throw into the pot, the better chance you have.

I want to start shooting for my next video. "Waiting for the Bus" is my working title, reflections on mortality and dying.

I am looking forward to office cleaning this summer. Top priority! I want to end the summer with 90% fewer possessions than I begin the summer. At one time in my life, a transition, I remember deciding to own only what I could fit into my VW Bug. It's a time like that again.

Being in Starbucks with the netbook reminds me of a small fantasy, living in a van and communicating here or in libraries, driving no more than 200 miles a day and always crashing where it is WARM, following the sun in other words.

I ordered a book on the new "self-deliverance" method, voluntary dehydration. Sounds to me like one would have to have considerable character to do this. Not sure I'd be up to it when it's time but I have been researching all possible options for avoiding what needs to be avoided, which is getting warehoused. It really pisses me off that there is so much phony moralistic judgments about this sort of thing, so that it really isn't discussed much in the open and so many have such horrid feelings about trying to die with dignity. I mean, if worse comes to worst, you can walk into the woods and blow your brains out but surely it doesn't have to be so extreme and lonely. If I'm lucky, of course, the gods, kind to me already far beyond reason, yet again would send me favor by letting me die in my sleep. But I don't expect this to happen. The tricky point is timing. The worst thing that can happen is get a stroke and then not be able to make decisions. Of course, I have documents telling what I want but this is no guarantee of anything. The only sure way is to take care of business yourself. The question is when. Before you are incapacitated. But how does one know when this will be? What a pain in the butt ha ha. I wish the species were constructed in such a way that everyone died a natural death at a certain age, period.  Meanwhile I feel like I have some good years left. But one never knows. One never knows. I just don't want to end up so I can't be in charge of when I check out.

Well, there's a good topic for a rainy morning! Our spring has fled and it's winter again.

I am ready for the school week. I wasn't sure what I was going to do among several options until this morning. I have a new class exercise that I hope will be helpful.  I keep tweaking my approach to screenwriting, trying to get the students up to speed as efficiently as possible.

I guess what I'm doing here is killing time, waiting for folks to wake up at home. Trouble with being the only morning person in the house.