Inside on a gorgeous spring day

Damn hourly contractor rate -- today is the most gorgeous day, I'm not getting much done at work, yet here I sit, because I can't afford to take off. I'm going to feel more broke on Saturday, when we go to get our taxes done. I worked from October to the end of the year full time on a 1099 and had no taxes taken out. That's going to be a bite.

Stayed up last night. First I read in the office while Cris studied -- she says it helps someone who's ADD to have someone else in the room providing a sort of anchoring presence. And I can use the concentrated reading time, since I am finally reading something I've been meaning to read for years -- Edmond Wilson's To the Finland Station. This has always seemed to me to be one of the Ultimate Serious Books one has to read, and I've been wanting to, and scared to, tackle it ever since reading Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes.

In that book, which is basically about the author's horror of mediocrity and obscurity, and how his fear causes him to be an alcoholic, the author mentions that he lives near Wilson, who to him seems like a towering presence. And he mentions Wilson as if anybody would know who Edmund Wilson was. I love it when authors do this -- I've gotten introduced to more authors that way. Because even if everybody is suppsoed to know who that author is, I usually have never heard of him. (I first heard the name of Thomas Merton that way, in William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways, when the author passes by Merton's monastery.

So anyway, I stayed up reading To the Finland Station, and then I tried to print out my novel to send it to an agent. But the toner ran out halfway through.