3/31 Goodbye, March

And good riddance. It was quite the odd month. To be fair, I got a shitload of writing done within its confines, and perhaps some of the best pieces I've ever produced, but it's been quite a ride nonetheless. I drank a lot this month, that's for certain. Today was no exception, and I spent the entire morning/early afternoon holed up in my room editing, organizing, thinking, researching and writing. Found a few places to submit freelance travel stories; found fewer that are willing to look at freelance music essays and reviews. Found a great database for submission deadlines for fiction all across North America-- now if I can only find lists like that for Australia, Britian, Ireland and South Africa, I'll be onto something. But that's just the beginning-- phase one, if you will. The next phase is compiling a list of all the music mags I love (or have heard of, or Eric knows, I'm not too picky) and hunting them down individually to see what the deal is. Same for travel magazines. I did some of the willy-nilly Google searches, but that didn't yield a whole lot. Polished off the remainder of my box of burgundy while in the process of 6 hours of fair productivity. I'm averaging a box a week (with liberal sharing) and for $8, that's not bad. I'm trying to only drink out 2-3 times a week, and not more than two drinks when I do to keep my overall bar tab low, comparatively, for the amount of overall damage I'm doing to my liver.

However, I did get talked into going up to the pizza place tonight, and on the way back there was a very old woman prone on the sidewalk. Apparently she'd taken a spill and couldn't move one leg and was fairly disoriented. I ran across the street to see if I could help, and the one woman who was already there asked me to call an ambulance--- and I had to ask what the number was. I suppose that's better than calling 911 and looking like an asshole, but after finding out it was 000 I rang them up, dealt with the only national emergency service network I've ever dealt with, then waited 20 fucking minutes for an ambulance to show (apparently, the first ambulance got diverted to a real emergency and they had to send another). Meanwhile, the 85 year old woman chatted away and a couple people helped keep her still until help arrived. I think she'll be fine-- it was just her right leg, fractured at worst, and she didn't hit her head or anything, so here's to hoping. It was disturbing in so many ways, but also reaffirming that so many people stopped to ask if there was anything they could do. Those are the only moments when I feel a shred of hope for the human race, that sometimes, just sometimes people can think outside of themselves and understand: pain anywhere is pain anywhere. If we can't feel compassion for that, no amount of ecstasy or patriotism will save us.

Drink Count: 8

Just to get to know the neighbors better, here are some nice shots of Colleen's awesome new nose piercing, Erin's borrowed hat, and Megan's... udders: