What a difference a week can make. By which I mean that last week when I parked downtown near Tribeca I had to practically climb a snowbank with my car, and this week there's green grass everywhere and just some remnants of ice at the curbs. (Which led to the delightful sight up near my place of a young woman walking a big cheerful pit bull who was ambling along with a chunk of ice in his jaws. Everyone enjoys a Popsicle now and then.)

( This one got long, so I think we better put it behind a cut. )

Overall, definitely worth risking a visit from Grendel. And far superior to what I listened to in the late '70s, although I suppose I wouldn't have agreed with me at the time...

I've got the iPod thingie working and have loaded it with a random selection of about a hundred songs--I only got a few CDs loaded on the laptop this morning, but this should keep me busy during bus rides for a while. Whee!

I mentioned in the last Gloryhound post that during one of the breaks between sets I was talking to Erin, one of the bar staff who is another aspiring writer, about the Robax experiment I conducted over the weekend. I was planning on getting a couple of different kinds of back pills (which I will eventually use up anyway, knowing my back) and a six-pack of beer and setting up a lab in my kitchen, but after the lilac head on the ginger ale I confess I was concerned.

Erin suggested switching drug classes entirely, with the eventual result that I have discovered that Ativan, an anti-anxiety medication, comes in liquid form and would certainly be a bad thing to add to somebody's beer.

Now, the reason I went with a Robax-type drug in the first place was because it is available over the counter and the police would figure Gareth could easily get hold of it. You can't generally get Ativan without a prescription, but considering our killer's history it makes complete sense that he would have been prescribed something like this and therefore have access to it.

Plus, one reason the police eventually let Gareth go is because of the shooting at the campground, which occurs while he's locked up (which is, in fact, one reason why it occurs: the killer is trying to get the police to let Gareth go so he'll be a target again.) But that fact could be bolstered by the fact that there's no indication he'd ever been in a position to have access to this type of drug. (Thin, I know, but it's one of a couple of factors.)

Anyway, this is an improvement and means I don't have to spend the weekend turning beer foam funny colours.

Which is actually kind of a shame, but there you go.