Fate has my number

Ugh. What with laundry, dishes, packing for both myself and V (fortunately she's done most of her own packing), deciding what food to pick up for the trip, running all last-minute errands, forcing V to go through all her leftover yard sale stuff and playing the time-honored game of Faster, Pussycat! Cull! Cull!, it's been a busy day thus far. And it's not over yet, not by a long shot.

There are days when I just want to gather everything up without looking at it and throw it in the trash. And with my luck, that will be the day when I discover I just tossed out a stack of unpaid bills.

In better news, an Amazon box came today, including my copy of the creepy and atmospheric picture book for grownups (there are too few words to call it a "graphic novel," really), The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott. It feels a lot like film noir. The story, almost completely told in pictures, concerns a man whose job is to run the electric chair at the prison. By chance he finds a scrap of paper left by an executed prisoner; on the paper is the long string of numbers referred to in the title. This numeric sequence begins to insinuate itself into his life in strange ways... first bringing him luck, then misfortune, then doom. It's put together beautifully and chillingly. As with all noir stories, it has its share of sex and violence, so it's not for kids.