Moses Lake is an odd little city in the middle of the Columbia Basin. It is also an actual lake; technically a reservoir when Crab Creek was damned in 1900 for irrigation purposes. That original reservoir is much bigger today because of the Columbia Basin Reclamation Project. I spent the night here and will be heading east within the hour. Back in the mid-Eighties I applied for a typesetting position here with a small webpress, but didn't get it because they hired a guy from Wenatchee. It was a shame, really, because I would've liked to have lived here.

I'd like to bitch about something, but I'm feeling too good to do that.

Last night a the warehouse where I picked up my load there was this kid. I don't know, at least 16 but certainly not over 19. Think of an ideal Nordic boy named Sven with that tight blond hair that is short and thick, wisp of a moustache and goatee, clear blue eyes, too loose sweat pants that he had to keep pulling up over an ass to die for, and the flash of abdomen and chest he gave me; the skin was lightly tanned and I couldn't make out any hint of hairs heading south from his navel. Was the flash on purpose or was it just something he normally did? Oh, yes, he'd been working very hard and his cheeks were flushed. Beside the sweat pants he was also wearing a black hoody. On top of everything else he was so damned cute he almost made me forget about the slender warehouseman I'd seen earlier in the day with a light, two day old beard barely covering his pale, clear skin.

The other warehousemen were Filipino/American adults, one was a grandfather, and mostly spoke Tagalog. (I used to work with someone who spoke that language regularly and got used to the sound of it. What was really interesting was her telephone calls to one of her friends from "home" who was also tri-lingual [English, Tagalog, and Spanish]. There'd be this string of Tagalog interspersed with a few Spanish words, and then, Nordstroms or Rite Aid would pop out and it'd sound so weird.) So, this extremely cute white kid in amongst all these older warehousemen was quite startling. He was so out of place that I suspect he was a summer hire, maybe the son of the owner or possibly the shipping clerk who seemed to have a bit of Scandinavian blood in her, too.

Chapter 15 is coming along, finally. I figure I'm about two-thirds through and should have it out by next weekend, depending on how my job goes. If I have to haul ass, or get super frustrated, the writing will stop. That's just the way it goes.