An email this morning:

"Thank you for your submission. I enjoyed reading
"The Perdition of the Carp," a very well written and original piece, and I would like to use it in the summer issue of Zahir."

So. Thank you California, where the perspicacious and talented editors of Zahir magazine reside. And thank you, Zahir magazine, for being my first sale of 2004.

And thank you to Tri-Met, whose intrepid bus drivers, maligned wrongly and self-centeredly by some, managed to get me to and from work every day during last week's crappy weather. Though I could barely manage to crawl through the snow and ice to the busstop, once there I knew that it would only be a matter of time before the digital display of an oncoming bus would blaze through the grim greyness, and the behemoth would whisk me away to help keep society from crumbling under this onslaught.