Sunday Rain

November 23

Dear Wichita,

Slow day today, Sunday afternoon and I don't have to work today. Rainy outside, windy too, so I think I'll just stay in. It's, uh, 256 PM and I've only been up for an hour or so. I poured myself a bowl of cereal and wondered what kinda nightowl I am turning into, eating cereal at 256 PM in the afternoon.

I don't have TV here in my apartment but I have a small ghetto blaster with a CD player on it. Got a good deal on it at some pawn shop just a few blocks over. The antenna is busted off and the left speaker is kinda fuzzed out but I rigged up a coat hanger and that seems to bring in the radio stations. Not that there is much worth listening to. I'll surf the net for a bit, but that only makes me want to go outside after an hour or so. Maybe I'll nap. Or read. Or stare at the walls.

I worked last night at the bookstore. Nothing to write home about, but it was okay. Guten came in for a bit, did his thing, left. My coworker Amy is in the middle of breaking up with her boyfriend, again, and I don't care enough to listen to her freak out over what he may have meant with what he said three weeks ago. She's okay, kinda cute in a English-Lit way, but has a piercing through her lip. It was supposed to be in the middle of her bottom lip, but I think she went to a shady tatttoo place, and it is a little off, to her left. I told her it looked like a fish hook and she said I was small town. I told her that I may be small town, but that doesn't mean I can't comment on how she looks like a pike.

"A what? Did you just call me a dyke?" she said.

"Nothing. No. Jesus."

It was a slow night save for that. She ignored me for a bit after she thought I called her a dyke, but then she started up again about her boyfriend. I think his name is Chad. Or Brad. I don't really listen and she doesn't really care. Blah blah blah, she went. I just went to the back of the store and tried to figure out a way I could take a photo of the northeast corner of the main floor wall.

I'm laying down as I write this, my legs propped up against the window at the foot of my bed. I can see cloud and rain and mist, hints of buildings. I can see the water running in interlocking rivets down the windowpane. I can smell curry. I can always smell curry.

You know that feeling that you get in January in Kansas? That closed in, dark feeling that comes standard with howling prairie winds and snowdrifts? I'm kinda feeling like that today. People here say that it takes awhile to get used to the constant rain and cloud. I see people who have been here for years who don't even bat an eye at an insane downpour, but on a day like today, when it could pour, new arrivals like me tend to resemble hermits. I suppose I'll get over it.

Maybe I'll go out today after all, maybe buy some shoes. My old runners are starting to smell and besides, no one wears running shoes here, not unless they are exercising. Fashion nightmare, apparently.

Hey to Mary for me, ok?

Daniel.