Indian summer here. It's nice. I did some work on my novel manuscript--reformatting it in a different font for submission (Times New Roman seems to popular these days), and doing yet one more polish. Hemingway said you don't finish a book, you surrender it. I guess there's truth to that. Anyway, then I went out for awhile and sat at the fountain at Columbus Circle where I almost got sideswiped by a low-flying pigeon.

I saw a woman with a stunning pair of legs on some really beautiful gray and red stiletto peeptoe heels. She was wearing a kind of 60s print dress, bare arms, nice and snug around the beam. She had a mid-20th century movie star figure, too--voluptuous like Marilyn Monroe, and even her hair was in a kind of 60s flip. She was standing on the street corner waiting for the light to change, and I couldn't help but give her a nice long look. She went into the Hearst Building, where they publish fashion magazines like Cosmopolitan. I wonder who's going to boff her tonight...unfortunately, I already know who isn't.

Regular readers will notice I haven't been posting this week; I've been writing, but not posting. All sorts of shit gets me upset, but everything I'm writing is full of bile. I may just be a damn grouch, or I may be suffering the consequences of overwork; but I don't like myself in this mode, and I don't like presenting myself to people this way. Hence my days of silence recently. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.

It's hard to believe time has gone by so fast, but this is the second birthday of my blog. If you go to the first entry, you'll see it's dated 9/16/05.

Now I suppose the blog will be heading into the Terrible Two's...uh-oh.

My thoughts are kind of a jumble today because, once again, I couldn't sleep last night until I got up, got dressed, made the bed, and then lay down fully clothed like I did two nights ago. I simply could not relax until I did that. I'd watched two more episodes of AMC's series about advertising men in the 1960s, Mad Men, kindly recorded for me by my writer/bodybuilder friend Rexx, whom I treated to dinner last night for his fortieth birthday.

I enjoyed Mad Men but the program gets under my skin emotionally. Watching January Jones last night in the role of the main character's wife, I felt so intensely that she represented exactly the kind of woman I once hoped I'd meet and end up with, somebody blond and beautiful and kind and maternal but with a nice little spark too, not a doormat, and sexy but not slutty. Well, life didn't work out like that at all, and although I got involved with a couple of genuinely nice women, for neurotic reasons I mostly got into relationships with nasty, self-centered gals who had chips on their shoulders. To be honest, I fell into those relationships without giving them enough forethought, I fell into them because of the availability of sex they promised, and I have borne the scars of my stupidity ever since. So watching the show reminded me how acutely astray things went from my hopes and dreams. I guess that's enough to give a person insomnia, huh?

I got some sleep last night, as opposed to the night before, but I awakened with my stomach in a knot and I couldn't eat any breakfast for almost three hours. I think I have to avoid eating at Wendy's, which is what I did for dinner last night.

Anyway, I just got a cup of coffee to give myself some warmth and sustenance (it was chilly out this morning) and went to Columbus Circle and sipped it for awhile. It was nice to be there when it was fairly deserted, the sky gray and overcast, the rain drying on the benches, a few pigeons scavenging here and there, and tourists themselves scavenging for the perfect photo op to frame themselves against Central Park, which begins its sprawl right across the street from the high statue of Christopher Columbus.

I went into the Time-Warner Center and up the escalator, and I was feeling pretty glum, but then a thirtyish Asian woman going down on the escalator smiled at me out of the blue, plain ole me, soft and bald ole me; so I thought maybe things are not as wretchedly bad as I sometimes feel they are. She wasn't all that attractive, but at least she smiled when our eyes met.

I went into Borders for awhile and browsed, and by the time I left the sun came out.

I had insomnia last night. I went to bed, exhausted, at 12:30, expecting to fall asleep right away, but I tossed and turned for seventy five minutes, got up and read for an hour, and then tried to sleep again. No dice. Finally at 5 a.m. I got up, put away the sheets, dressed, and was only able to fall asleep when I was fully clothed on my futon couch. I finally slept from 5:30 to 10:30, had some breakfast, and did some of my freelance work. It was a hard slog at first, but I finished what I had promised myself I would do.

Still, it just seemed that all stresses in my life, all the disappointments, were coming to bear on me mentally last night, and I didn't want to sleep. It was almost as if I were afraid to sleep.

Everything seems to get to me lately. Yes, I continue to be in a very ornery mood, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

I don't even think the company of a beautiful stripper would cheer me up, unless she offered to dance for me for FREE...and since THAT'S not about to happen...

...I guess I'll just get back to putting the finishing touches on the query letter for my novel manuscript, and try to find an agent.