I got a call from an Adobe corporate rep today, was I the person who bought software for the company? No, we have an arrangement with a software reseller, we buy Adobe products, but by one's and two's budgeted by individual work groups at our various locations. The web people, the marketing people use Photoshop and Illustrator and some of their other products, but we don't buy enough to make it worthwhile to negotiate a corporate license. Maybe that's how I got invited to the seminar, the fact I'd upgraded my personal Photoshop and Illustrator licenses and mentioned when I registered them on the web I worked for a company with over 10,000 employees. Hope springs eternal. Maybe I need another 9,999 copies. Maybe a fellow like me needs to attend a seminar in San Francisco. I think so. No apologies.

A couple of drinks this evening, neither of which seems to help the writing, but both of which were necessary. Hot today, hot this afternoon, hot this evening. Oakland and San Francisco sit on the bay and get the breeze from the ocean. The fog comes in at night and the mornings are usually cool, the breeze shifting from the east on a day like today where the inland areas can climb up over a hundred and the temperatures here well into the nineties. Today it was 84 with 60% humidity and I'm sitting with the sliding glass doors open. And I've had a couple of drinks. I think I mentioned I've had a couple of drinks. And although it allows me to write, it doesn't allow me to edit. Whiskey is no friend to an editor.

I am listening to public radio as I write and a woman author is talking about Nabokov and James and Chekhov. I have read Nabokov and James and Checkov, but not in a while. I sometimes think it is better to not read when you write, but this is a personal observation. You have to read everybody you can read at some point if you want to write or carry a conversation in a salon. We have lots of salons here in Oakland, where people discuss Nabokov, James and Chekhov, often over drinks before dinner. I am over drinks before dinner. And the weather is hot. And the humidity is high, but it's getting cooler, and pretty soon I'm going to go into the bedroom and crawl into bed and pull the covers up and not think about Nabokov. Or Chekhov. Or James. Particularly James.