well, it feels pretty darn good to have an apartment that we can call our very own. we've therapized through initial fears (it's so small, we only have an electric hotplate), traumas, (one of us, who shall remain nameplace but isn't laura, stood up, after looking through the floor refrigerator for some tofu, and bashed (his/her) head on the pantry cabinet), and other small disasters, including non-functional fluorescent lights, mosquitos (we have a wall of doom full of bug splotches and little blood marks), and, I'm sorry to say, the occasional cucaracha, all of which should be eradicated soon, as we received a personal letter from the Head of Department of Vermin Control stating a fumigation next week. We've learned that we are really in a superb location, surrounded by canals and old buildings and galleries which really do contain 17th and 18th century Dutch Art, and the cutest little crepe place which really does have Dutch doors.

The weather has, well, dropped, but not, yet, unpleasantly so. Days are in the 40s and 50s, so the long johns are moving to the front of the closet, the sweaters are coming out. It's still clear and extremely nice, and it seems to keep the mosquitos and the tourists away.

The really strange thing that has happened to me is my brief infatuation with snooker. BBC2, this last week, showed snooker 6 hours a day. For those of you bright enough to have blocked out what snooker is, it is a variation on billiards, except the pockets are smaller, the balls have different colors, everyone who plays is automatically british and stuffy and wearing a tuxedo vest, and the table is as large as our apartment. I was seduced by the charm, the complexity, and the concentration necessary to "pot" the balls in the pockets. And I just wanted to take the commentators (oh, he'll have to do well to pot the black in the side, does he have enough cue power to screw the white back?) home with me and listen to them over and over. (my word, what a terrible mistake, someone of hendry's stature would never foul in such a manner, perhaps there was a spot of dust on the cue). Well, I cured this short and virulent disease simply by playing snooker for an hour. It is the most impossible game I have ever played, bringing a normally coordinated man to his knees in despair. I can only liken it to playing go. Thankfully I'm over it, and can resume my normal life. Friends were starting to screen their calls, because I would ring them every day and say nothing into their machines except, "Snooooooookerrrrrrr....snoooooookkkkkkerrrr."

I've been working quite a lot on the novel; immediately after I returned from Berlin, I decided to make some massive changes to the novel; basically removing the first 300 pages and using them as back story. This was an emotionally trying and difficult decision, but I believe it is the correct one; work is flowing quite well, and the first chapter (50 pages) is almost ready for public distribution (which is a significant achievement, if you know how tightlipped I usually am about my work). The first 50 pages were ready to go last week, but I made the wonderful mistake of giving Laura the draft, and after going through the incisive shredder, I've revamped the most egregious mistakes.

So: if you want to read/review the first 50 pages, please tell me, and I will email you the draft on the week of Nov 5. (I am writing in Word 98, can backsave it to any version of Word or and program that can read Word files.)

Funniest moment this week: watching a bartender completely bamboozle the house cat by shining a laser pointer on the floor, which the cat thought was edible. And the cat never learned.

For Laura's birthday, we went dumpster diving and found a nifty cabinet. It was about the most surreptitious thing we could do in A'dam, casing a trash bin at midnight, leaping into the bin and pulling out the cabinet.

L- and I are leaving for Paris today, meeting our friends Luke and Chris and Adriana. I can't wait. Poor L- is feeling a bit out of place, she's the only one of us who can't stumble through French, I think she's got a bit of a complex about it. I think she should really plunge into a loud Texas accent the entire time we're there, and see how far she gets.

Every Sunday night on Fox are HongKong movies, so we've gotten our Jet Li fix the last two weeks, thus cutting the number of things we miss by one.

Book Review Action: Laura just read The Hours by Michael Cunningham, The Good Husband by Gail Godwin, and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle, and highly recommends them all. I've read the latter, and it's brilliant. For my part, I read The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, and it is one of the most perverse books I've read in years. It's great, but not for the faint of heart. I also had a wonderful, wonderful treat, finding that one of my favorite poets, Mark Doty, has a new book out, entitled Sweet Machine. Everyone should read it, although I recommend that you start with an earlier work, "My Alexandria". Finally, for all you comedy lovers, I finished A Confederacy of Dunces, and it's also pretty amazing.

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postscript 12/1

We were in Paris for the last week in October, and it was a dream. I had forgotten what a big, dirty city it is, even as it has hundreds of spellbinding things to see, food to eat. My diet, incidentally, was beer, coffee, eggs, bread, and cheese. My accent was a nightmare(cauchemar?), but it passed, somehow. We ran around like chickens and cigarette smoke filtered through our pores. Adriana and Chris were perfect compadres, and it's all one giant postcard.

November: Some of us turned 30 this month. A nice, quiet birthday, a killer indonesian meal and a good beer and a game of dutch scrabble. let me tell you, the j's just aren't worth as much.

I'm not releasing the novel excerpts until I finish the fourth chapter, which should be in the middle of December. If you want me to send a copy, drop me a line, and I'll send it when it's ready to roll. Needless to say, I'm happy with the progress, and I can't possibly understand how Kerouac wrote some of his novels in three days, drugs or no.

Please say hi to us, we love the mail, and we're slightly better correspondents now that we have an hour or two.

xoxoxoxo

r-

PS finally broke down yesterday and had a cup of Ben and Jerry's, and it was good.