So the toilets backed up today for no apparent reason and we had to call Roto-Rooter to unclog the whole mess. And for all the mess that it was, it could have been a whole heck of a lot worse. It wasn't a bad day off, and all that went wrong was softened by the fact that I have another day off on Thursday. However, that means I have to work the weekend. This isn't all bad as I really need to figure out how to work the weekend routine but that'll all come in time. I'm feeling pretty good about my job right now--like I really fit in well and that's a good feeling. I don't have this terrible sense of impending doom when I go in to work like I did at first. That was mostly a function of being so unsure of myself and not knowing what I was doing and never knowing what each day will bring. But now I'm a little more sure of myself and I don't feel quite as green as I did when I started. I still don't know what each day will bring, but I feel like I could work there a hundred years and still feel that way.

I'm listening to this bootleg Madonna remix that I downloaded probably in the Audiogalaxy days. It's called the Erotic Bedtime Mega Mix (Love Zone)--whatever that means! It's mostly a mix of ballads from the Erotica/Bedtime Stories era, but also throws in "Crazy For You" and "The Look Of Love" + others for good measure. It's 26 minutes long, so it's probably the only thing I'll listen to tonight while I blog.

I gave up on The Corrections--I just couldn't take it any more. As I was telling Kevin, I would have probably enjoyed it a lot more 10 years ago when I was in my John Irving phase, but I just couldn't handle how pretentious it was. The characters inspired irritation rather than sympathy and I just didn't care what was going to happen to any of them. As far as I was concerned they all deserved whatever they had coming to them. It wasn't even that engagingly written. Too much hype and too much press for a book that really wasn't all that good to start with. He probably gained more noteriety from being an Oprah Book Club selection (only to spurn it, which probably gave him even more good publicity.) I have a feeling that book won't really be remembered 50 years from now.

So instead, I picked up an old Jay McInerney novel that's been in my possession for about 10 years but has just never been read. It's called Brightness Falls and it isn't too bad. I'm convinced that McInerney had only one really good novel in him (that being Bright Lights, Big City--which is one of my all time favorite books) but this one's not half bad. I haven't quite figured out where the story's going yet, but it takes place in 1987 in New York, so it'll at least appeal to me on that level.

And while I was surfing for links on Jay McInerney, I found this one from The Guardian where he describes his 9/11 experience.