Have to come up with a good subject line here

Short updates on domestic life and work:

It seems that Kauto is finally, at one year and (almost) five months, beginning to sleep his nights. No more waking in the middle of the night. Sigh! It's weird, though, that waking up at seven or seven thirty seems more difficult to me now than, say, two months ago. Maybe the fatigue is at last coming through. Or then again it might be that it's still dark outside when you wake up.

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We got a lengthy e-mail response from an editor who works at the publishing house that rejected our YA novel last week. It seems they would still be interested, but only if we develop things further. It's just odd that another published said exactly the opposite thing and asked us to turn down the homosexuality thing. This one wants more of it. (It's odd also that if they really show interest in the manuscript, why reject it with only a short notice and not call us and say that maybe we should work together on this and we have some ideas etc. I don't get publishers.)

Elina is at work with the ms as I write.

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Shot the first insert for the TV show yesterday. I had to cut my speech down severely to make it to match the one-minute request I had. It took some 1:20, though. That is no problem, I was told later. Don't really know how it went, since there was only the photographer. They hadn't sent me a director. And they won't in the future, which is weird. It's as if they wouldn't want it to the best thing possible.

I wore a black Stetson-manufactured fedora from the fifties in the shooting (it was shot outside). I asked Elina whether it looks silly or snobbish, but she said it looks just fine.

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Finished polishing up the two manuscripts I'm sending to a crime novel contest. Wish me luck! I find it even at this point extremely hard to tell whether my stuff is actually any good or not.

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There's a presidential election next Sunday coming up. I've been wondering why people put so much emphasis on TV debates and such. Don't they have goddamn political views on which they can vote? Don't they know on whose side they are on? Don't they know on whose side the candidates are? It's not shopping, people, it's a serious business!

Someone quoted recently Bertrand Russell as saying: a man without a political view is like a man without pants. (Or something to that effect.)

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Too much television shows at the moment. Mondays: Desperate Housewives. Tuesdays: Shield and Deadwood. Wednesdays: Deadwood comes out so late that we'll have to watch the previous night's show from the tape. Thursdays: Lost (starting today). Fridays: Battlestar Galactica (missed the first one last week). Saturdays: umm.. actually nothing. Sundays: The Wire (to my mind the best show at the moment, but I always seem to forget it - it comes out at 23:50, which is just plain stupid). I just hope Lost and Galactica are crap and won't have to watch them. Housewives is very entertaining (and not just for Eva Longoria), but it drags.

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Spent a lovely night yesterday reading Dupuy-Berberian's Jean graphic novels and short stories. Simply wonderful! I could easily identify with Jean who is a young literary novelist (with one novel to his credit) and who lives in Paris and associates with his friends and mates. In one of the short stories he reads a negative comment on his novel. I knew exactly how he felt! In the end of the last of four I read Jean is getting to be a self-adopted dad to a little boy called Eugene. I find the situation deeply moving and touching. The boy is spoiled and difficult to hang out with, he doesn't really know where his mother is and his real step-father is a shallow sociopath (even though he's Jean's best friend).

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Enough of this. There's a lunch soon.