Remote Broadcast

I am not at home today. I'm spending the day in the apartment of my Prince. There's a very good reason for this. The air conditioner in his car went out. May I remind you that this is Florida? I didn't demand that he get it fixed, but I told him I'd see him in October. Late October. Maybe early November.

Anyway, I offered to pick him up at the car place and take him to work. Then I'll spend the day here and go back for him at the end of the day. Why don't I go home in between? Good question. Although we live in the same municipality, he lives in a suburb on the south side of it. I live in a suburb on the north side. The sprawling city lies between us. Gasoline is over three dollars a gallon for the T-Bird. You do the math.

It's been about two and a half years since I got out and went to an office every morning. Traffic is different. Let me rephrase that. Traffic is horrific!! I thought if I left my house at six-thirty, I'd be ahead of the crowd. HA! To get ahead of the crowd, I would've had to leave my house in 1987.

Well, I'm here now and I got him to the lab on time, despite my worries about all those cars and wherever the heck they came from. Now I have an entire lovely day stretched out before me with absolutely no distractions. Oh, yes, I'm on the Internet right now. But his computer is old. It's slow. His connection is better than dial-up, but not much better. I can't be seduced by any of the online games I like to play - VMK Rocks! - and I don't know how to get to my email. So, I'm pretty much doing a Paris Hilton here today.

Oh, except I can leave whenever I want to.

And I don't have to wear an orange jumpsuit.

So, it's a return to the dining room table for me. If you've read TOUGHER THAN DIAMONDS - and if you haven't, why not? - this is the same table that's mentioned in the dedication. I wrote a lot of that book on this table. It resided in Maryland at the time, and there was a Starbucks I could walk to, but it's okay. I still love the table. And if I get bored here, I can look out the third-story window to the shimmering metals of the automobile graveyard just next door.

In fact, I was looking out just a few minutes ago. There's a man on a forklift, weaving his way between the crushed corpses of someone's yesterday dream car. I was wondering...what if he pried open the trunk of one of those cars and found a human corpse? How did it get there? Who was the person? How long could it stay in the junkyard before someone found it?

Oh, wait. I forgot. I write romance.

Back to work.

Have a great day!
Delia