Today is the first day in weeks I've been able to wake up before noon.

I don't know what it is about unemployment (relatively speaking) that makes sleeping so late so very attractive. I've lain in bed, thinking, "I should get up, I should ... zzzz." I am going to bed by 1:30 most nights and the alarm is set for 10, yet I snooze on. Mm.

I'm fairly happy with the way my mini-redesign of the Soapbox section is going. I can now be more specific to things, which is cool. I've wanted to say stuff about comics for months, as more and more madness kept happening, but it was just never ... I dunno, important enough.

A rough question did come my way today: "how's that chapbook coming along?" Born Beneath An Angry Star, my collection of poetry, is ... just not moving. The text is all in, the editing is mostly done. I just gotta figger out how the pages lay together. I've got it all set up to do it, with a key and a Photoshop file with little drawn folded pages ... it just never pops into my mind.

When I talked to my mother, who's recuperating from a shoulder surgery, and she emphasized the importance of accepting incremental progress. I wanna finish comic proposals now, as soon as I get the ideas. I wanna finish stories now, before the next concept springs into the endless fount of concepts that is my imagination. She talked about doing a little on each project as the mood strikes, and not being frustrated by where I am on any one project. My stalled sci-fi novel, in its last quarter but untouched in months. My Image comic book proposal, plotted through two years and scripted through one issue. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.

My old boss Regina Jones talked to me about it, how she longs to write her book, but the demands of her day gig wrap up her mind even after hours. I can relate -- after a day at AOL, my creative facilities were less than razor-sharp. I look at the time I have now as a blessing, and hope I can make use of it.

Had a phone interview with the National Notary Association. It went pretty well. I'm not sure I'd take it, but it sounds interesting. While I like the freedom I have now, money is nice as well, and I have proven I can do the newspaper and have a day gig. Some other things suffer, but baby, sometimes that's just how it is.

I feel myself becoming more like my fathers, both the great uncle who raised me and the genetic father (Curtis Paschal, shown) who circumstance kept from me. I yelled out the car window at a woman blocking a lane, just like Curtis would have. I sat back and looked at the world with vague disgust, like Harold Grant did so many times. I don't think, in my lifetime anyway, that these men were ever "happy" per se. They had moments -- Curtis loves chess, for example. Harold Grant would sit on Saturdays and watch Gunsmoke and boxing matches. But real, sustained happiness seemed alien to them. They kind of set their shoulders and drove into the oncoming fury, accepting the hell heaped on them by racist workplaces and never-understanding-enough women. That's what men did in their day, and as Lex Luthor said on Smallville some weeks ago, we're all prisoners to our fathers at times. I don't mind, I finally think I'm starting to understand.

In happier news, I have been eating Krispy Kreme cinnamon buns left and right. After I wrote a love poem about their confectionary delights, lo and behold, they return to my life. I have been meaning to do another stanza, but it hasn't shown up on the doorstep of my brain yet.

In other news, I did my first bit as an Instrument of Justice. My good pal Daniel is suing his former employer, and he needed somebody to serve the papers. I signed on, figuring it'd be a hoot. Little did I know I had to fill stuff out and actually drive my Black ass downtown to stand in a line. Being an Instrument of Injustice is a lot less hassle. Still, it's one-third done, so I'm forging through.

I'm debating changing my pre-paid cell phone. The phone I have I dumbly ruined, its headset left plugged in as it jostled through my pockets until it surrendered its life. I can get a refurbished newer model phone for $30 or so, but I can't keep my number. Admittedly, I only barely know my cell phone number, and I don't want people calling me, but I am resistant to change. I'm leaning towards the newer model, as it's less crappy than the one I have, but we'll see. At the store, I was treated like a second-class citizen because I didn't want one of their godless "committment" plans that shackle you to a monthly bill and a service term. I don't use phones that much, and the data transfer rates are too goofy for me to invest in that, so I'm staying GDI as long as I can.

That's about it for now. I debated doing a column about contracting the NBA, based on a short piece I ran in the paper a few months ago, but God pound it if ESPN's Bill Simmmons didn't go ahead and do it even better. I love reading this guy's stuff partially because he's insanely funny but partially because we knew similar pain -- he worked at the now-closed Boston office of AOL's Digital City, and his work there got him his ESPN gig, which propelled him to become a writer for the Jimmy Kimmel show on ABC. Hope springs eternal, but I recognize I'm not an affable white guy, so I keep my hopes realistic.