Days are weird right now. My latest romp with taking drugs for money has ended not with a bang but a whimper, which is how these things should go- I’ve fulfilled my end of the obligations and wait now for the cheque to be mailed. My novel is finished and now sits in the inboxes of a handful of friends I’ve asked to do read-throughs on the first draft; from there I’ll re-write and then follow-up with a few others to see if they can tell me if the final draft reads finally, and try to find someone who wants to publish the thing. Two novels by twenty-seven is pretty good, I think, but of course I don’t feel even remotely legitimate until they stop being conceptually finished things that exist on a computer and become physically finished objects that I can throw at people when they fail to offer me the sort of validation I am shallow enough to need.

What am I talking about? And how often do I type that sentence when writing here? Jesus Christ.

Anyway. My old friend Cindy flies in tomorrow morning for a week-plus of hanging out in England. We’re going to Manchester in a few days because her friend’s band is on tour in the UK and so we’re going to both their Manchester and London shows. In between this, I’m responsible for securing a new place for Kat and I to live, as our lease expires on April 6th and we’ve opted not to renew it.

It’s been a good run on Queen’s Crescent, definitely a good way to start out living in a strange country. We had taken the place at a price well above what we could afford because it had a second room that we could rent out; in exchange for having done the work of finding it, we took the larger room for ourselves and rented the smaller one to a flatmate at a slight profit, because we are global capitalists. However, it quickly came to our attention that living with strangers is not really on either of our agendas, and so we’ve decided to incur additional expense and move a few extra tube stops out to have our own, much smaller, space again.

I think it’s a good choice, but it makes me miss America to think about. In Texas we had a gigantic apartment in the heart of Austin for roughly half of the £750 per month we’re going to spend to live nine stops out of the centre of the city. But such is the price of London. It’s up to us to make it worth it.

To that end, I told Kat yesterday about my plans for her birthday, because while surprises are fun, this sort of surprise is impractical if it comes during the week between one lease ending and the other beginning. Arrangements need to be made, at least so you know where you’ll be sleeping. That being the case, I told her that we’d be sleeping in a chalet in Gryon, Switzerland, a town in the Alps about 120km outside of Geneva for most of that week. That should be a good one, right?

It’s all a bit ridiculous- we can’t really afford this sort of thing, as we’re ridiculously poor and debt-ridden, but I did sell my body to science for extra money, so we do have the cash to do it… And if we don’t, and choose instead to, like, eat with it, then what’s the point of being here? You can eat in Texas, you know, for a hell of a lot less money than it costs to buy the same meal here. The ingredients are liable to be fresher and you can actually get real tortillas without making them yourself. But we are not in Texas, and so we will be irresponsible and go off to the Alps to sip hot chocolate and sit by big fires for a few days, until we return and battle London once more.

Oy yoy yoy. I’m a little melancholy tonight, but not for any good reason. I just feel a bit rudderless without the book to occupy all of my headspace, a task to either work on or feel guilty for not working on. I scour the Internet for news on the NFL free agency, to see if the Bears are going to acquire a decent wide receiver or left tackle, but none is forthcoming. Things are generally in a holding pattern- the election offers no reprieve or news, just the Clintons talking about how rad it would be if Barack Obama would be the Vice-President to Hillary even though she’s insisted that he’s not qualified for the job, because when a black guy is winning by a fairly wide margin, it means he should get second place. And so I’m bored. Brandon Lloyd signed a one-year contract for the league minimum salary, pretty much nothing even if it’s many times more money than I’m liable to see over the next couple decades, if the previous one was any indication, and he may well be cut before the season starts. Most football news is about the draft, but I don’t follow the college game so it’s all just names to me.

And so much for all of that. This is a bit rambly and dour, considering that it’s mostly good news- my friend is coming to visit! we’re going to switzerland! my book’s still finished! we’re getting a new apartment! but sometimes all the good news can be stressful, too.

Finally, after a prolonged delay, week five of the thirtying is up at takingtigermountain.com- expect to see the column returned to a regular schedule this week, though I’m not sure on which day it’ll be updating just yet.