Month: August 2010

Monday various

It’s just a restless feeling by my side

Just a typical Sunday hereabouts, one part New York Times crossword, one part writing group.

On my way home from writing, I picked up a kneeling chair I’d bought at the beginning of July, when my back was starting to hurt me more than usual. I have a friend with several herniated discs who swears by the chairs, but I’ve never used one. And finding one that seemed to be both high-quality and affordably priced wasn’t easy.

I ordered this chair online through Staples, to be delivered to my local store where I could pick it up. They estimated delivery around July 30th. Online, though, their website just said that it was shipping, and then earlier last week that it had shipped. I couldn’t get any more information. More often than not, their “track this shipment” option just returned a blank page. So I contacted customer service by e-mail. They said that the chair had shipped and had been delivered to the store on July 16. Meanwhile, this is now almost three weeks later. No e-mail, no call, nothing. The one time I was able to get any information out of the website, the tracking number was all but useless. The box was shipped by UPS, but that’s not what the website said. How I was supposed to know the box had arrived is beyond me. I guess they didn’t care, since I’d already paid for it.

Picking it up wasn’t much of a hassle. I just had to show ID, and then wait while they failed to find a record of it in their system — or at least the record that would let them print out some form I had to sign. Probably, the woman behind the counter told me, because it had been sitting around their store for several weeks and was no longer in their system.

I haven’t set up the chair yet — in fact, the box is still sitting in the trunk of my car — but I’m curious. In the time since I bought it, my back seems to have adjusted, and the pain it gives me has again become very manageable. But if the chair can help improve it, that’s all for the good.

“Oh, this Twinkie thing, it ain’t over yet.”

I woke up pretty early this morning, even if you discount the weird dream that woke me up around 4 a.m. half convinced a pizza delivery was at the door. In my dream, I was searching for cash I didn’t have, and I think my own shout of “I’ll be right there!” may be what woke me up. I can’t say with any degree of confidence that I didn’t actually shout it in real life, too.

But no, it wasn’t just imaginary pizza delivery that got me out of bed early on a Saturday. My father wanted to take the car in for its annual inspection, and right before 8 a.m. on a Saturday is the best time to bring it to our local mechanic, just as he’s opening up shop. There used to a very convenient Saturday morning train between the station a block from his garage and the station a block from our house, but about a year ago the Long Island Railroad discontinued that train. (Which I found out the hard way when a five-minute train ride became a five-minute train, ride plus a twenty-minute walk, one early weekend maybe two years back.) So I drove over in the other car so I could offer him a ride back.

Only, they didn’t have any inspection stickers today. This is not an infrequent problem, but it’s really the only one we’ve ever had with this mechanic, so I guess we can’t complain. This morning we were delayed getting to the garage, first by a car in front of us that seemed convinced green meant stop, then by a car blocking our turn because he was pulled alongside a taxi cab and was chatting to the driver, and then finally by police cruisers blocking the railroad crossing that runs near the shop. We got there just before the owner did…but there was already somebody else waiting…and he got the last of the remaining inspection stickers.

So I guess we’ll try again next weekend.

Beyond that, I spent a lot of the day reading. I finished No Dominion, the second of Charlie Huston‘s “Joe Pitt Casebooks,” which I guess you could describe as hard-edged, vicious vampire noir. I liked it, same as the first book, Already Dead, and it was definitely a quick read. With it (and a novella or two that may or not really count), I’m only up to 25 books for the year so far, out of my hoped-for annual 50. So maybe it’s a good thing that this morning I bought a copy of the third Joe Pitt book, Half the Blood in Brooklyn. Like I said, they’re quick but entertaining reads.

I also read a few stories still kicking around in my slush pile for Kaleidotrope. I’m closing the zine to submissions in a week, for the rest of the year, so I’m trying to get through what’s still sitting in my in box not yet read.

I went for a walk, did a tiny bit of writing, and then had an idea completely out of the blue that makes perfect sense for the story I’m writing…but of course does mean I need to re-write and re-think pretty much everything I’ve put down so far.

I watched a couple episodes of Breaking Bad — which I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to discover — and then this evening Zombieland –which, if not remarkable, was a whole lot of fun.

And that was pretty much my Saturday.