You're Entering the No Spin Zone

Morning is a relative term anyway, so no guff. Not that anyone noticed. Most likely, most of you have things to do during the day, things that don't include checking blogs every hour or so. I'm not saying anything incriminating, am I?

Back on track. I renewed my lease and I'm staying in Chicago, at least for the time being. You wouldn't believe how this area heats up once baseball season starts. Noise, fans, souvenirs, scalpers. It's like a hibernating bear has finally awoken and, having been dormant for 5 months, must feast ravenously in an all-consuming quest to... consume. It's exciting, especially because the weather gets warmer every day and because we can sell our parking spaces for $25-30 a pop. It's an unexplainable joy when someone hands you that much cash for standing on the corner and holding a sign. In fact, the worst part of it is when our last (of four) spots gets taken, because that means there is no more money to receive. The only comfort is the unreasonably long baseball season. And the money.

Another exciting thing coming down the road is that Jonathan Safran Foer (the author of The Red Hand Book) will be appearing next week at my local Borders Books Music Movies Café Emporium. I am planning on attending, and perhaps even discovering if "The Red Hand Book" is a widely used title. Signing and reading most likely to follow.

I'd also like to report that I have reached the halfway point in a screenplay I mentioned earlier and I'm extremely pleased with my progress. It is tentatively titled "The Pirate Princess" and is an action/adventure/ romantic/comedy that may or may not turn out to be good. However, it's the first time that my screenwriting has ever felt natural, in the sense that sometimes I couldn't write fast enough to keep up with my mind. Other times, writing scripts in classes, the process was a relatively awkward affair, like the painful moving of a kidney stone. Not to say that my writing is perfect now, certainly not. I've already accidently reread to find sentences like "he darkly looked across the darkening dark room." Ok, I exaggerate, but really, when I've been writing I've mostly been concentrating on getting the image onto the page, with extensive rewriting withheld for the second draft. Because it's easier to be completely creative and completely logical (different sides of the brain) all at once than constantly switching back and forth.

Check out KT for some great travel stories from her invasion of Turkmenistan, full of neither Turks nor Stans, but probably men. The blog revival is upon us! Happy Resurrection Day.