The Totally Cool And Awesome Mail Of The Day award goes to Jon, who sent me an huge envelope crammed full of New Yorker cartoons that all pertain to writing and/or SF. Thanks tons, Jon! We put them up on the bulletin board by the elevators, and everyone is getting tons of enjoyment out of them. Extremely Cool.

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I opened the second package of coffee this morning. It's halfway through week two, and I still have four more packages left, but the coffee consumption around here has increased markedly. We look at the remaining supply of coffee and wonder if it will hold out until the re-supply comes, but there's an uncertainty there that is disquieting to all of us. We can't bring ourselves to cut back or ration ourselves either. It's as if we're being driven to consume. It's vital to our well-being, or so we believe. The heady rush of the caffeine is so pleasurable, and the sensation of actually being to focus on objects after short sleep is delightful.

But the limited supply of coffee begins to prey on our minds. We sit at the table with our hands curled protectively around our mugs, and the crowd that waits for the first pot every morning has grown restless and ugly. I fear the day when I cannot meet the growing need of these addicts.

I have created a race of monsters.

Okay, I've also been writing far too much.

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My third story is a garbled mess of dreck. At 1am it was still a garbled mess of dreck, and so I finally gave up and went to bed, but I have this very awful feeling that I'm going to have to slice about 2000 words out of it to get it back on track. I really would like to turn it in on time (tomorrow...AKK!), but I'd also really like it to be semi-coherent.