I've been living in the boatyard for nearly two weeks. It's loud, commercial, full of marine poison finishes, spray paints, epoxies, glass fibers and other toxic substances. I've been up to my elbows in paint for days. I've ruined most of my clothes. It feels like living in a sort of post apocalyptic junkyard, complete with dead birds, mangy dogs and rowdy tenants. Between materials, haul out, launching and blocking (putting the boat on stilts), it's cost me an arm and a leg.

Christmas Eve I meet up with Charles and his pretty girlfriend Cassy. We eat bread, hummus and salad at their new home, drink wine and talk. Charles leaps in the pool. Their roommates' little girl is crazy excited about her presents. She's being cleverly distracted as her brightly wrapped gifts are shuttled from their various hiding spots to their rightful home beneath the evergreen.

I tried sailing to Stock Island a second time on Wednesday. The small craft advisory that went into effect Monday was still in place. The wind was blowing around twenty and the seas were very rough. I'd never been out sailing in this area under conditions like that. The water didn't look like waves at all, but more like the deep, angry claw marks of some giant beast. Each wave was some six feet tall and they were positioned one right after the other so that the boat pitched up then down continuously at what seemed like thirty to forty degrees.

Visited Damien and Stacy in their boat. Marley, too, but she was put in the bathroom as soon as I got there. "Night, Marley," says Damien. Stacy tells me last time I left I failed to say goodbye to Damien. He had been talking about a kayak and I didn't want to interrupt. She seemed relieved.

Inside my boat wondering whether or not to use the jib due to strong winds. Looking in the V-Berth. I'm on a voyage and it's some sort of secret. I'm speaking Spanish. It begins to rain and an older, Hispanic woman holds a mirror out of the cockpit.

I fear it will give away our position and yell: Quiere todo el mundo verle?

In waking life I lie down to sleep and begin having stress dreamlets. Tiny little dreams wherein I'm placed in some absurd, stressful situation that lasts only a moment and then wakes me into a fright. Then another one instantly over and over. Like a type of torture. This has never happened to me.

I'm returning Charlie the dog to Josh's house, and I'm really stressed because Charlie has to shit and is about to shit on the stairs and I have to be somewhere and I don't know if Josh is home. Awake.

Booked passage to Central America on a small motor yacht piloted by my former boss Randy. I am convinced, somehow, that goods are being smuggled on the boat and am unsure if I want to go.

Lydia has booked the same trip, and I'm sure that she shouldn't go, either. I'm also sure that there's no way to prove that I'm right, and that Randy will be very angry if I decide not to go.

When I finally say that I won't go, he and others become very mad. Look, he admits, my sister may have packed some things that she shouldn't have, but we'll have them all removed.

Living in an apartment with a girl. It is a fairly small place in a cheap building in a ghetto neighborhood. Working all day to make ends meet. On getting home, a chandelier thing in the ceiling begins smoking. Some dust comes through where it connects to the ceiling, then a hand. The hand removes one of the three light bulbs in the fixture, then withdraws into the ceiling.