Today's mood: frustrated and pissy. For several reasons:

It's cold. Very cold. And I don't mean "oooooooh, it's winter in New England I better bundle up" cold. I mean an atmosphere that feels like pure ice. The chill and numbness are instantaneous, the air clear and still. It's like living on Pluto, a cold barren world at the end of the solar system. But without the gasses that envelop the atmosphere. Of course, I'm only guessing here. I know many of the planets have methane and nitrogen and other gasses in the atmosphere, so I'm making some quick non-scientific guess here that Pluto does too. It's not like I did some research before I started writing this. Hell, I'm not even sure if I spelled "gasses" right. But I'm not going to look either piece of info up in a book because...

...my hands are incredibly chapped. And I don't want to get any e-mails that say I can't take a little boo-boo. The tops of my hands are raw, red, cracked open, and bleeding. Like the surface of Mars (I sense a pattern developing). Yes, I'm using hand medication, Zim's Crack Cream [insert your own rude joke here] every night before I go to bed. But, during the day, it's impossible to control. I mean, it's my HANDS; more specifically, right along the knuckles and fingers. It's not like I can not use them for a few days. I eat, I wash, I pick things up, I put things down, I write, I open cans of vegetables, I shake hands with people. And, right now, I'm typing. Whine, whine, whine.

Good news: I finally have a bed! No more sleeping on the couch! Bad news: somehow, I pulled a muscle in my neck/back area. Are the bed Gods trying to tell me something? Maybe I'm going to be in pain for a few weeks until I get used to sleeping in a normal position, not the awful fetal and Jesse Owens in mid-stride positions I've been used to.

Yes, there's more! The novel sale is stuck for the time being. I had someone who wanted to publish it, but it's not a very good deal. I'm going to try to get an agent interested (something I've been putting off in general anyway), and see where it goes. I still want to give it another edit anyway.

And I'm ticked at the people at E! for the hatchet job they gave one of my heroes, Rod Serling. Here was a brilliant writer, a hard worker, a champion of social causes, defender of freedoms...and all they do is focus on his alleged womanizing in the 50s or 60s and the fact he died at such a young age (50). He died of heart problems brought on by both smoking and his family history, but it gets lumped into the typical True! Hollywood! Story! of someone who burned out at an early age. No interviews with his wife (though it was good to see George Clayton Johnson), and the few interviews they did have pushed the so-called sensational side (if there was one). Authors pushing tell all tomes, etc. I'll stick with the PBS show done a few years ago, thank you. And now I'll never look at the E! True! Hollywood! Story! the same way again. Who knows what else they got wrong or what wrong angle they took.

Did I whine enough? If not, send me an e-mail and I'll send you a personalized whine session. This weekend should be better: the Super Bowl! I hate football with a passion! But I'm going to be with great friends I don't see enough of, and that makes all the difference in the world.

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