I just had a moment of panic where I thought I'd missed Karen's reading at The Regulator Bookshop, but then I went to the website and saw that it's on Wednesday the 28th at 7 p.m. This just shows how screwed up my mental faculties are right now. Research papers have destroyed my brain.

So anyway, Janet and I will be at the reading that night (Karen was one of our teachers at Clarion, and she's one of my favorite people), and I hope you will too. Copies of The Jane Austen Book Club (which came out last Thursday), will be there, and I'm sure she'll be reading from it. Yay!

***

Progress on the writing front goes slowly. As I try to hammer a paper out of a topic I'm now sick of looking at, and can feel my brain slowly oozing out my ears in an attempt to escape, I wonder why I try so hard. And then I look across the room at my lovely wife as she finishes another new painting, and I know.

I'm about halfway through my first paper, the one due on Thursday, but I'll have all day Wednesday before the reading to work on it, since I have the day off work. I'll get up early tomorrow morning, and the next day, and try and hammer this sucker out so that I can enjoy spending a little time with Karen and not feel guilty that I should be working.

I guess if grad school was easy, everyone would do it.

Now Reading:
Show World by Wilton Barnhardt

Stories Out to Publishers:
7

Books Read This Year:
26

Zines/Chapbooks/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
11