Poe has been with us a little over a week, and in that time we discovered that (a) Poe is a girl, and (b), she is extremely affectionate, going from half-feral when we got her into the house, to insisting on sitting on our laps, shoulders and heads.

No new books here in the first week of the year, and my reading time has been limited. I am still working my way through Sayak Valencia’s Gore Capitalism, and opened up Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (again) just for some light reading. I also finished all the stories in issue 7 of Pulphouse, which is a truly excellent magazine. I am glad they are back in business and are making a good go of it.

This past Thursday, January 2, I went back to work after almost two weeks off for the holidays. More importantly, I started in on my new morning routine, which is really more of a clarification and expansion of my old morning routine. It goes something like this: Wake up every morning at 5:30. Work out for about 45 minutes. Do writing stuff for an hour and a half. Work out for fifteen more minutes. Get ready for work.

The writing stuff is broken up by day. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I write. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I edit. on Friday, I submit. That meant that this past week I got in one day of editing and one day of submitting. It worked well; I got in some good edits on three poems and submitted four older poems to three journals. We will see how this goes. As a sub-goal I will try to send out about five submissions a week of variously assembled packets of poems and whichever of my large slush pile of short stories are ready to send out into the world.

As I get fully into my routine, which will likely happen in February, I may adjust some things to account for my girlfriend’s new morning schedule when she starts her new job, and the wants, needs and demands of the kitten.