Baked goods, bads, and morally ambiguouses.

See that? That's the face of the earth. Here I am, down here, having fallen off it.

It's been a very busy month so far, and I'm only now starting to take a breath. I had three weekends in a row that were packed to the gills with Stuff, I've been trying to get the Awful First Draft of Provisionally Titled Gate Novel complete so I can stop disliking it, and the busy season has started at work. To top it off, I somehow came up in the rotation for my writers' group again, so I had to cobble together the vague short story idea I'd had into something readable. Still don't know whether I've succeeded in that.

( Weekend 1: San Francisco and Tahoe )

( Weekend 2: Wedding (not mine) on the Cape and lots of fire )

( Weekend 3: Viable Paradise reunion )

Next weekend looks blessedly unbooked, which is a very, very good thing, because the weekend after that, we're hosting a dinner party. The apartment's currently a pit, and I'll be doing some serious cleaning and moving-of-furniture (shut up, wavyarms) over the next few days. I also need to learn how to make a decent mole sauce. Rendering Templars down does not seem like the best option, plus they're hard to find these days. Maybe I can substitute Freemasons; I hear they're recruiting.

I'm back. Yes, even though most of you didn't know I was gone, I am back. I took this week off from work and headed up to New Hampshire with thomascantor. No internet, a phone but no answering machine, no TV, and only the radio to tell us of the outside world. (Of course, when NPR is the station of choice, that still keeps us pretty up to date.)

Some of the things I did:
- Climbed two mountains (running into unexpected friends on top of one and getting over some of my fear of heights on the other).
- Dozed off on the beach.
- Discovered that if you have a white mark from wearing a watch, that white mark can get a sunburn all its own.
- Found the first dead mouse of the season!
- Wrote out a chapter-by-chapter account of what the next big revision will be, including preliminary outlines for new chapters and lists of changes to existing ones.
- Wrote preliminary outlines for two short stories (one involving figured bass and deals with the devil, the other involving despotism and soccer riots).
- Ate thomascantor's pancakes. He makes good pancakes.
- Read lots of mystery novels, which seem to end up at the cabin just from the beach reading effect (people bring them up to the cabin, read them on the beach, and then leave them there for someone else to read). I managed to guess the killer in at least two of them, though both were Agatha Christies.

The one annoying thing: after I called the place that had suggested an interview and told them I was free Thursday but out of communication until today, they sent an email saying they'd like to meet me Tuesday. Of course I get this email today. Gyaaaaaarrrr. Wonder how badly I've screwed this up.

But nevertheless, I'm glad that I was out of reach. For once I didn't feel guilty about sitting and doing nothing in particular. I needed this.

And now I've got a day or two to write before Readercon and thomascantor has time to get ready for Montreal. All is well.