AS I WRITE THIS, I AM SITTING IN THE STALE-SMELLING, TEMPERATURE-CONTROLLED LIVING ROOM OF MY FAMILY’S ORLANDO, FLORIDA TIMESHARE. It’s just me and my trusty laptop. Not another soul between here and the doorway. I am alone, sort of like Michael Corleone at the end of “The Godfather, Part II,” only I didn’t order my brother Fredo’s death. I don’t even have a brother named Fredo. I don’t even have a brother. Oh wait, I do, but his name isn’t Fredo, and he’s still alive. Perhaps the reason this room smells so stale is because I left the gas on. Hold on while I check…

Nope. Didn’t leave the gas on. That’s good, because suffocating on gas fumes is bad. Also, stove is electric. Let me tell you what I did today. Checked in around 1 p.m., then drove about two miles down the Interstate to the closest supermarket. Bought pasta in a box, and tomato sauce in a jar. Got some chicken and bread crumbs, too, and made enough of everything for dinner tonight and tomorrow.

Before I cooked anything, though, I decided to go swimming. It may surprise people to hear that swimming is an activity I greatly enjoy, except when I have to share adjacent water with half-naked people. Like the crazy general in Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” I, too, believe that communists are trying to attack us through our precious bodily fluids. So while it may seem to the unobservant eye that I spent two hours this afternoon swimming, I actually spent two hours half-swimming, half-panicked-lunging away from some dude whose back was so sunburned the skin was starting to peel. I can only hope he didn’t suffer from leprosy, but even if he was a leper, you can’t catch leprosy from a swimming pool, can you?

After eating pasta with tomato sauce and breaded chicken, I walked around some and explored souvenir shops. Everything is too tacky or too commercial, or doesn’t scream “Florida” at all. (A cane full of M&M’s. WHY?) Of course, if I could have found anything genuine or intriguing in this state, I probably wouldn’t have moved away. Anyway, I went back to the timeshare, and spent the rest of the evening reading Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone. The first hundred pages are pretty interesting. I think I read in some critical text on Kubrick that he read O’Brien in preparation for making “Full Metal Jacket.” Was it in preparation for writing the screenplay? Couldn’t be, otherwise, wouldn’t that imply plagiarism?

Anyway, before sitting down to write this, I took one more trip to the front desk. I got brochures for The Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Universal, Sea World, Medievel Nights, Splash Mountain. Look at all this crap! Funny thing, though. On the way to the front desk, I passed an adjacent unit, and encountered this young, attractive, Latin-looking chick just leaning up against the wall. She was smoking a cigarette, wearing a red tube top and black miniskirt. I figured she was a hooker. On the way back to my unit, I passed her by again. Upon second glance, turns out I might have been wrong about her being young, attractive, Latin, or a chick.

I think I’m gonna go home Wednesday.