half empty half full

We spent the evening clearing out a path through the living room to bring the fridge through. The living room looks half empty, half full. But the half empty side is nicely vacuumed.

I checked out the calendar and the rest of the weekends this month are filled, along with all the Sundays in September. I'm not sure how that happened but it did. Tomorrow an 82nd birthday after moving the fridge.

Some time in the next few weeks I need to sign up for French 2 which starts in a few weeks. Bon jour!

We dropped to #5 in the bowling rankings and came out 2-2 this week. The other team had a guy who averaged 191 and he was absent. Always hard when the guy who's gone has a really high average because that average score that average every game. The team started off really slow, though I finally got that 151 score everyone got last week and managed to beat my average every game. In the last game we pulled it together and barely won the overall pins by 2. The alley got brand new shiny pins and balls were just sliding off of them rather than going through. We just have to get through next two weeks, breaking even or better and then we're in the finals. The top 10 teams head to a tournament mid-Sept in Palo Alto.

As a reward for making it to the finals, we're going to get Retro Bowling shirts (the purple one in this style). Hopefully they come in time for the Jubilee tournament. Black along the sides, very slimming.

I've got a little over a month to finish off the poetry book. I've got just under 50 pages of writing not counting the Pinoy Poetics essay. Found a friend who will design the book. Will go visit another friend next week in search for cover art. I've been discussing distribution methods with my publisher. Part of the moronics of poetry economics lies a great deal in the distribution process, especially as printing process gets cheaper and cheaper. I'd like to avoid as many of these moronic economic distribution systems as possible with the goal of (is it possible?) making a profit on the poetry book. Oh, and I'm sure there are people reading this thinking but poetry is a labor of love and poetry isn't about money. Hell, I'd be exstatically happy if it made even a penny of profit! But I just want to know how possible/impossible is it really to make some kind of profit on a poetry book. Does poetry always dictate a monetary sacrifice on someone's part? I mean, we often lament the demise of various small presses, and book stores because there isn't a market, can't compete. And yet, there's one store that's actually thriving, and it ain't Amazon. The reality is that if there are no new models for small presses and publishers, then poetry will continue to be the literary charity case and poetry essentially will only be published due to the good graces of a relative handful of benefactors. If a poetry book makes a profit, it means there is more money to publish the next book rather than less, profit allows for proliferation. It means there might be more money to print one more book this year.

Okay, so perhaps I'm being overly optimistic and even naive to the business of poetry, but I figure this is my first book and I might as well come out swinging! Just trying to be creative in every aspect of this process. I'm sure my publisher would be happy with breaking even, but if we're going to do that, then we have to think about something higher. You just can't take the numbers out of an accountant's daughter.