It was the wine, I tell you

I got my scene in Chapter 5 of Angelika done just after midnight, hurrah! Now on to a short story today, as well as finishing a long-overdue critique, and then on to Ghosted again for a few days.

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered Anne Stuart’s blog and am enjoying it immensely. (The only reason I can do this, and post these entries, and send my scene from Chapter 5 to Teresa last night after triumphantly finishing it, is because one of my parents’ neighbors has no block on their wireless. Bwahaha!)

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Today my Halloween socks are black with white “bones” up the front and orange bows at the top. In case anyone’s keeping track.

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Today I also catalogued about 90 family photos (scanned, added to the database with all available information, phutzed with info in genealogy program) and been beaten by my mother in Trivial Pursuit (she plied me with wine). It’s a tough life, I tell you.

Name that child after youself, and I'll...I'll...!

We got in at about 2 a.m. and crashed last night. Sleep goooooood.

Today we went out and bought a scanner so I can continue scanning in all our family photos. Despite the small size of the town, this necessitated a trip to three stores (one of them twice) and two grocery stores (okay, not for the scanner, but that’s the way my mother shops. Neither store had good tea or Dr Pepper, though.). I spent the evening adding stuff to the genealogy program, which led to the discovery that on my mother’s side of the family, there are four Daniel Loewens in a row. After tearing my hair out in frustration, I announced that I was going to create a character named Daniel Loewen for the sole purpose of making him sterile so that he can’t name a son after himself.

Waking and sleeping and flying and ferrying

On the plane to Chicago. Ken’s asleep. Our other seatmate, whom I believe might be from Sweden (judging from the language her Reader’s Digest appeared to be in, although it could have been Norwegian. It didn’t look Finnish to me, but two brief trips to Finland do not an expert on Finnish make.), is also asleep, and it’s a little hard to type because I’m trying not to bash her with my elbow, being the considerate seatmate that I strive to be. As for me, I’ve read (Thunderbird Falls by CE Murphy), played Baker’s Game and Demon Solitaire and done a crossword puzzle on my iPhone, shared a snack box with Ken, and now I’m working on Chapter 3 of Angelika (reviewing what Teresa wrote so I can move ahead to Chapter 5, because I wrote Chapter 4 so I don’t need to review it).

The last two days have been extremely busy, and I was additionally hampered by being very tired on Monday. Chapter 5 should have been to Teresa Monday night, but as I was prepping supper (bbq chicken, brown rice, steamed broccoli) and washing dishes, the perfect voice and opening for a short story reared up and wrapped itself around my brain, squeezing like a python until (once supper was in the oven) I sat down and wrote it.

Unfortunately, by the time we’d eaten supper and finished watching the TV show we’d started with supper, it was all I could do brush my teeth before collapsing in bed.

In other news, my hair is purple again, and my natural silver streak is growing in nicely, which makes me very happy.

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Aaaaand now we’re in ORD. I have a mocha and an outlet to charge Afalwen; life looks up.

An older woman just asked, “Does your shirt say ‘Spooky’?” “Why, yes it does,” I said, moving my purse strap aside to afford her a better view. “But you’re not spooky at all!” she said. Hee! Then I showed her my Halloween socks (purple and green horizontal stripes on the top, black on the bottom, with a black-and-yellow buckle at the ankle). :-) It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

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As we descended into IAD, a huge pumpkin moon glowed over the right wing. Gorgeous. I love flying. :-)

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Well, that was interesting! We boarded the plane to BTV…and then deplaned because there was a mechanical problem, and it was going to take up to two hours to get the mechanics there, and only then would they know whether they could fix it or rebook us on other flights.

So I called my parents, who’d gone to Burlington early and were already at the airport (well, in the parking garage), and told them to go home (about an hour away, depending on when you hit the ferry crossing Lake Champlain)—we’d either spend the night in Burlington or in DC.

Five minutes later, they announced that the plane was fine, get back on. So I managed to call back and say “No! Come back!” and in the end we arrived 12 minutes behind schedule. (The pilots made up some good time!) Turns out the problem was simpler than they realized and the on-site mechanic made short work of it. Which is cool. I’d much rather be delayed and find out there was no mechanical problem than the other way around, you know?

So all is well. Welcome to autumn in upstate NY!

Away away! My heart's on fire!

Off to New York tomorrow! The last two days have been busy: laundry, unpacking and new packing, hair appointments, massage, grocery shopping, chiro appt, writing, phone confab with Teresa, some snuggling time with my beloved and the wee furry ones on our comfy new sofa, library runs, Black Oak Lodge stuff, and goodness knows what else. No time for catching up here (that's what plane flights are for, right?)…

So I'm really looking forward to long, mindless walks in the Adirondack woods!

The War is won!

Home from War! No time to post in detail about it now, except to say it was quite lovely. Ken took up rapier again, I bought a gorgeous handmade ceramic cup with a Welsh dragon on it (after waffling for hours) and a pair of fibula (fibulae?) for my various peplos (peplini, we decided the plural is), and I seem to have been suckered onto War staff again (damn you, Rowen, and your compliments about how well I did Publicity last time! Curses!), but I still came home with the deep knowledge that my career comes first. The fun stuff (and I do count insane volunteerism as fun) is the sauce on the pasta. (I like pasta better than cake, so the icing metaphor is weak with me.)

Now we have two days to get a million things done before we leave for a week visiting my parents in upstate NY. (Cross your fingers for me that the autumn leaves aren’t completely gone—we’re spending some time at our cabin in the Adirondacks and I crave Real Autumn!) Things like a minimum of grocery shopping so we don’t order pizza for lunch and supper for the next two days, and laundry so we have clean clothes to pack, and packing so we have clothes to wear (and can we do it all as carry on? Hmmm…), and all that sort of thing. Oh, and a chiro appt and massage for me and hair appts for both of us.

I’d feel stressed, but instead I’m feeling energized, and now I’m off to get a million things done. Hopefully I’ll post again tonight!