So I have a shiny new iPhone, but the nice people at the phone store have so far been unable to retrieve my phone numbers. If I had your number before, PLEASE e-mail it to me (Yahoo or gmail address), send it to my Facebook inbox, or, failing all else, send it as an eBay question. No matter how well I know you, I almost certainly did not have your number written down, and the only ones I had memorized were Chris' and my mom's. Without your help, I will be like some Oliver Sacks character, cut off from my past, unable to communicate with anyone from my pre-washing-machine life.

My phone number stayed the same, so I suppose you could also text your number to me. (Be sure and tell me who you ARE, so I don't have a bunch of lonely, nameless phone numbers wandering my inbox.)

Again, I apologize for boring those readers who do not communicate with me by phone. I can't make these posts friends-only because some of my closest friends are not on Livejournal.

I just washed my God damn cell phone. As in, put it in the washer (in the pocket of my gardening pants) and started up the machine. The cycle had gone ten minutes before I missed it. I'm trying to dry it out, but I'm pretty sure it's dead. Ah, well, it was a prehistoric one anyway, the kind that flipped open and had a numeric keypad, and people have been telling me I should move into the 21st century. (On Sunday, my friend Harold showed me how his iPhone can say the rosary. I didn't even know a phone could be Catholic.)

This, after Chris locked his keys in the car last week. It's probably just as well we never bred.

Anyway, that is the only phone I have, so until further notice (I hope to go to the phone store tonight or early tomorrow), please assume two things:

1. I am not reachable by phone.

2. If I had your phone number before, I've probably lost it unless Chris had it too.

I apologize for boring readers who do not communicate with me by phone.

A few weeks ago I read a terrific thriller, No Time to Say Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. I liked it so much that I ordered three more of his books from Amazon, which arrived today. They are not thrillers. They are funny, "madcap" caper mysteries about a science fiction writer who stumbles onto corpses in his spare time. I got a bad feeling when I saw the Rocky Mountain News blurb on one of the covers: "If Dave Barry wrote mystery, it would be something like Barclay's Bad Move." Dave Barry is OK in small doses; I used to read his newspaper columns and enjoyed most of them, but I've never been tempted to pick up one of his books. I'm six chapters into Bad Move and not feeling very optimistic.

I'm not complaining that Barclay's other books aren't just like the one I enjoyed. You know me better than that. Nay, I am the ass here; instead of seeking out Barclay's other books at a store* or at least reading the editorial reviews on their Amazon pages, I ASSumed that they, too, would be straight-up compulsive-page-turning thrillers. I should read them all just to punish myself for doing the very thing that has often made me want to murder my own readers, but I'm very, very worried by the fact that they appear to include a recurring character who is a dominatrix. Funny madcap + writer/detective protagonist + whitebread dude's concept of a dominatrix may be more than I can take.

*In my own weak defense, I did look for more of Barclay's books at two local bookstores, but neither of them had anything except No Time to Say Goodbye.

It has been politely called to my attention that my "dead-end job" comment was unnecessarily snotty given the fact that I was decrying the snottiness of people who use terms like "Chalmettairie." Mea culpa. I plead Lower Magazine Street Cool People Overload. Here's hoping my Internet stays on at home so I can cease to darken the door of that skeezy joint. Hey, what the hell do I know? -- maybe Mr. Chalmettairie is putting himself through medical school or writing a novel that will sell more copies than anything I've ever written. (If I had to guess, though, I'd bet he is in a band. And that they suck.)

An excerpt from Waiting For Bobby Hebert will be posted on the Subterranean Press website sometime in the next few days. It's not the beginning, which is still somewhat rough, but a couple of sections from around page 50. (Instead of chapters, I've been dividing this story into Roman-numeraled sections with Frasier-esque titles, something I've never done before and am not certain why I'm doing now. "It just feels right," as the artistes say.)