2005-07-07 - 10:12 p.m.

I got my car fixed a week ago. I was coming home from the school and just got off the highway when the engine temperature needle shot way up and made my heartbeat do things it shouldn't. I was right next to the BP on Mount Royal so I pulled in there and a few days later, two fixes later, they replaced a coolant hose, the thing that connects the coolant system with the engine block, and the thermostat. The problem was only the thermostat but they didn't know that until they replaced the other two things. So I paid a lot for it. My car's gone 130,000 miles. When I bought it, four years ago, I remember sitting in the salesman's office, signing carbon copied papers, thinking there's four years of my life. It's been paid off for a year and it's been a good car. It's got tons of tiny problems (the pneumatic lock system, the actual locks on the doors, a sunroof that one girlfriend broke a little and another girlfriend broke a lot, and weather stipping that won't stay the fuck on) but it's stick shift and I never got tired of it.

I've been spending a lot of time with people I love and so when I come home every day, I get that feeling that I spend a lot of my energy trying to get. It comes easier here. Last night, playing pool and drinking Stella Artois at Friends, I told Kevin that I loved being back. "You're making me warm in the heart," he said. Some of these people in my life talk like this all the time. These are the people who make me want to write, to create. Looking back, I know this urge was always there. But I feel I have the tools now, the ability, the words to say, too.

"Did you get your heartache and your head rush confused?" the Secret Machines guy just said and though I don't know what that means, I like it. This girl at work and I have been trading notes, trading in Nabokov (she) and The Shins and Jeff Tweedy and Andre Aciman (I).

Tomorrow I teach the newspaper formula: the inverted formula and the lede and the nut graff and the use of quotes. I feel it's something I can finally teach with some real experience behind it. The more creative stuff is so hard to pin down that sometimes I wonder (on days when I don't get the feeling on the drive home) if it can really be taught at all. But some things can be taught, for sure. Nuts and bolts and Ways to Achieve Desired Effects. But, though it's taken me a long time (too long) to realize, I do like teaching. I like the lightbulbs.

A bachelor party this weekend. A full-on softball game at two (I've been pegged for short), strip club (as shown in "The Wire"! I just saw the first three episodes of this show, and at one point one of the dealers, talking about another dealer taking risks, says "That nigga gonna get got!") at six, and $55 buy-in poker at ten until when the fuck ever. Poker is starting to piss me off. I liked it more when we played retarded games like Twister and Chicago Low, but now it's all Texas Hold'em and suddenly there are experts everywhere. I like winning one of every ten hands. That's all I need. Anyway, I've never met the groom but my friend Kevin is organizing it and he got everyone he knew involved. A full-on softball game means at least forty guys.

The Norfolk alternative weekly finally published my book review. They published an essay I wrote in forty-eight hours on the Deep Throat guy a few weeks ago. So I'm getting actual money for those. And last week I found out a literary journal is taking another short one. This will be my first paid one in a literary place. Twenty-five a page, a sum about which I'm not sure if I should be excited or nonplussed. Nonplussed!

At a Fourth of July barbeque, I was talking loudly with a friend and when I meant to say "Don't you provoke me!" it instead came out as "Don't you provost me!" I like this other one better.

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