Redactophobia!

Spent another Saturday at the ICA Boston with my thrilling costume box, taking portraits of visitors as themselves and not themselves.

You can pretty much tell where I started and ended this sketch, because my pencil stops being sharp after a certain point.

New socks! Which I did not wear on St. Patrick’s Day (or as Ciro calls it, Green Mardi Gras), because the symbol of the Irish is the shamrock, people, the shamrock.

Currently on desk: 3 copies of the litmag James is helping edit, Etruscan cultural history Ciro needs for short story research, and a copy of Arc Magazine I’m using as a style reference for an article about robots in the workforce.

I have recently enjoyed applying random patches of color to discardable objects.

Dear friend James Hargrave is in town for the AWP conference, prowling about the attic and surrounding balconies. (It’s not name-dropping yet.)

In the corner, I hide the cords. The shadow knows.

Quietly, the surge protector does its under-the-table work. And sometimes acts as a night light.

This chair is practically the only piece of furniture I bothered to bring with me from Dallas. I think I bought it for $5 from an antique store in Oak Cliff that was open for maybe a month, next to the Jamaican curry place that was open for just a few months but where I ate every day it was open. Jamaican stewed okra, I miss you. So much.

The laundry room is on the second floor; to keep water pressure even in the rest of the house without straining the pump, there’s a toggle that takes the machine on and off the plumbing circuit.

In February, members of the town’s Episcopal church festoon their trees with fabric hearts. Sometimes you realize a person you see most Sundays lives next door, and has for years, but is never outside at the same time you are.

My headphones, Sony MDR-V300s, which aren’t made anymore. Extremely lightweight for their sound quality; lets me work in the studio all day without getting a headache. The fact that it’s taped together means it sometimes sticks to my hair.

It’s a cliché that writers drink too much coffee; I have counter-argued that we don’t drink enough. Of the half-dozen coffee machines we use regularly (for different strengths, different volumes), the Bialetti moka gets the most use.

After a week of melts and re-freezes, the backyard looks like the surface of the moon.

Our wine glasses are dishwasher safe, but too tall to fit in the dishwasher. Consequently, they form a constellation on the counter by the sink.