Sometimes, owning a home makes renting look attractive. Take this weekend, for instance. I got home from work friday, looking forward to taking my daughter to her percussion lesson and spending that half hour with Mr. Heinlein. Instead, I discovered $500 worth of air conditioner parts blew out. With a 109-degree day and an 88-year-old woman in the house, it had to be fixed. I stayed home and watched the repair guy.
The pool is green again, still having algea problems from last year when that numb-nuts repair guy underestimated the repair time of my pump by 8 days. Thought I had it licked this July, but the algea has come back with a vengeance during this hot, hot August. It’s looking more and more like I’ll need to drain the thing completely this winter. What a sinful waste of water in the desert.
Speaking of wasting water in the desert, I spent this morning replacing the guts of the solenoid valve that controls the front yard irrigation, then digging holes to replace a couple of sprinkler heads.
Haven’t done much writing in the past few days between life events, home repairs, and help with homework. Mailbag recently, got back a couple of stories I don’t know where to send next. One from Zahir, one from American Short Fiction.
The ASF sub was one of my few non-speculative offerings. Unfortunately for the story, I write more utilitarian than literary. That’s a good thing, for the most part. I don’t really do literary, it’s not me. Not a lot of popular fiction can be called great literature, but it certainly makes people happy. Satisfying the reader is more important to me than becoming one of the greats of American literature. That’s not going to happen, my prose is too transparent because I try to keep out of the way of the story. My fiction is not about me, it’s about entertainment. If you enjoy the story, I consider it a great success.