stop the ice from getting thinner

I've been listening to a lot of acoutic-ish indie music lately. Badly Drawn Boy, Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie, Sufjan Stevens, that kind of thing.

I ordered Mika's new album the other day. I'm hoping it will be here soon. I thoroughly enjoyed his debut album, so I'm anticipating this one to be excellent as well. To contrast that, I also ordered Foxy Shazam's last album. I think they actually have a new one coming out soon. I'd really like to see them in concert again sometime. Eric Nally's stage presence is fairly indescribable.

I'm narrowing in on 13k words on my novel. Planning on making it to 15k by the end of the week. I don't think I'm going to have it entirely finished by the end of the month like I had planned, but it will be close. It will definitely be sent out to publishers before Christmas though. I already know who I'm going to have read it, edit it, critique, etc. before I ship off a final product. I'm very confident in this novel. Probably too confident. I'd like to think that this novel will finally be the one thing that works right for me. I'd like to think that a year from now I'll be one of the youngest persons to be on the New York Times Best Sellers List, but I think that's pushing it.

Here's a new snippet for you:

"George the trainer gave me a quick run-through on what was expected of me: how many vacuum cleaners I was supposed to sell in what amount of time, what territory I was to cover, etc. Then he gave me a quick run-down on some tips on how to “pawn off these pieces of shit to those dumbass foreigners”. He apparently didn’t seem to mind that I was a foreigner. George went with me to one house after his ‘training’ and sarcastically told me that I was going to do just fine. With that, he was gone and I was all on my own in the world of door-to-door vacuum cleaner sales.

That first day I sold no vacuum cleaners. On day two I sold no vacuum cleaners. On day three though, I discovered a small record store that just happened to be hiring. I went into the store pulling behind me the vacuum cleaner that I was supposed to be selling. I looked rather queer going into this record store dressed in a grey suit pulling a vacuum cleaner behind me, but despite my odd appearance the owner of the store met with me almost immediately. Ten minutes later after having quickly delivered a slightly truncated version of my story, Paul, the owner of the store, told me to be back the next day at 9AM sharp and to lose the suit. He agreed to pay me just less than minimum wage in cash under the table, which I of course accepted. On top of that, he even bought a vacuum cleaner off me – two actually, one for the store and one for his home."

I would of course appreciate any comments or suggestions or inquiries that you might have.

I think I'm going to try my hand at getting published in The New Yorker again. We'll see how that goes. I'll update you in 3-4 months when they respond.

I began the admission process for the education program at my university. I'm confident that I'll get in, but at the same time I am a little worried given my streak of bad luck lately. I won't take no for an answer though.