Late night

I stayed up too late last night, trying to finish the book I'm reading (Still Summer, by Jacquelyn Mitchard) I wasn't able to finish it; I knew I needed to get to bed, so I reluctantly put it down at 12:30 and went up to bed. Bob had gone to bed hours before--he needed to get up before dawn this morning to get to work early and get some things done before the store opened.

When his alarm went off at 4:30 or something--some ungodly hour like that--I didn't even wake up. I had a hard time waking up when my alarm went off at 6:30, both because I'd been up too late, and because it was still full dark. And raining.

Standing in the shower (I did eventually get up), I was thinking that I could tolerate the rain and snow and cold temperatures better if it wasn't for having to get up in the dark. And then I realized that we never "fell back" this year -- this is the year that Daylight Saving Time lasts an extra month, right? Okay, I checked -- DST ends on the first Sunday in November. So in a couple of weeks we'll gain an hour (or get back the hour we lost, I guess), and it will be a little lighter in the mornings, thank goodness. Although that means it will be darker earlier in the evening, I guess. It's all tradeoffs.

In spite of the rocky start, I was pretty productive this morning. I dried (and hung up and/or folded) a load of laundry, ate breakfast (a bagel with veggie cream cheese and a glass of orange juice), and made lunch for today and tomorrow--Spanish rice with tomatoes and white beans, peaches for dessert, and cottage cheese for an afternoon snack. I haven't been eating very well lately, and by that I don't mean I haven't been eating, I mean I've been eating crap, so I'm making an effort to do a little better. I actually don't usually do too badly at lunch, but it could always use improvement.

I figure rice, vegetables and fruit for awhile would be good.

I went to the library over the weekend and ended up checking out a TON of books. I always check the "New Books" shelves, and found several things there that I wanted to read. Whether I'll actually read them or not is anyone's guess, but it's nice to have options.

Almost everything I got were books of short stories--"Year's Best Science Fiction," "Asimov's Science Fiction: 30th Anniversary Anthology," "Best American Fantasy," "Best New Paranormal Romance," "Year's Best Fantasy," "The Best American Mystery Stories," and "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year." Whew. I actually had no idea that I got that many short story collections.

I actually have kind of a problem with short stories. I got all of those books because they all contained stories by some of my favorite authors--Connie Willis, Kage Baker, Elizabeth Hand are the ones that I remember. Short stories are hard for me because they're, well, short. In general, I prefer long books, and when I'm reading short stories I tend to read them too quickly, I think, because . . . well, I don't really know why.

Anyway, just another of my weird quirks. I pick up short story books because I both love them and hate them. Love them because there are often a bunch of things by several of my favorite writers in one volume, hate them because the stories are just too short to be satisfying. Novellas are good -- shorter than a novel, but longer than a short story. Some of those are just right.

I was thrilled to see that Connie Willis has a new Christmas story in the December issue of Azimov's. All of her work is wonderful, but I especially love the Christmas stories.

I was also thrilled to see that there's a new collection of her short stories coming out -- The Winds of Marble Arch. I've read most of them, of course, but it's always nice to have them collected in one place. Normally I would get a book like that at the library, but I decided I had to have this one. It's published by Subterranean Press, so it's a limited edition, and I had a moment of panic that I actually wouldn't be able to buy it. But Amazon had it available, so I snatched it up. It should be here today, to add to the pile of short story collections that I built on Saturday. I might read it first, though.

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Not dead

I've had several people ask if I'm okay, so I thought I should at least post something here -- I'm here, I'm fine, not dead, just busy. And the change into autumn is always difficult for me -- getting up in the dark, and coming home in the dark are hard, and when I get home I don't have a lot of energy for doing much of anything. So anyway, nothing going on, just work work work, and even when I'm not working, I'm working -- either doing freelance web stuff or making jewelry or putting jewelry up for sale. So things are fine, good even, just busy.

Bob is the "Employee of the Month" at work this month. They have a program where customers (and other employees, maybe, I'm not sure) can fill out a comment card commending an employee, and you get a gift card, and once a month they have a luncheon for people who've received them. They had the monthly luncheon yesterday, and Bob was there, and he was named employee of the month. I told him, "You're my employee of the month every month."

What?

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Weekend away

We took a quick trip down to Bennett Spring this weekend. Bob got both Saturday and Sunday off -- a rare occurrence -- so we decided to take advantage of it. It was kind of a bad time, I had a LOT of work that I needed to do, and I was feeling kind of stressed out. But it's never really a good time, so I decided it would be okay to go. I took my newly-repaired laptop so that I could do some work if I needed to. The park has a wifi connection in the dining lodge, so I was able to download my email a couple of times and be sure that there were no crises (there weren't).

We didn't stay in the park this time, but in a lodge close by where we've stayed before. This was the view out the back window of the motel room on Saturday morning:

Bob had gotten up early and gone out to fish while I was still sleeping. He came back, and we went up to the lodge for breakfast, then went back to the river. I sat in a lawn chair and read, and it was very peaceful:

Then a big truck pulled up with a load of canoes, and then the canoeists themselves showed up.

They loaded up and (presumably) took off -- I couldn't see anything but canoes!

Then they left, leaving behind some of the canoes for people who were coming later, I guess.

Shortly afterward, Bob decided to go fish in the park, by the dam -- I don't know whether he was afraid he'd hook a canoeist or not, but probably.

With strategic cropping, it looks like he was alone out there:

I didn't think it was very crowded, but he thought it was. Of course, everyone was fly fishing, which takes a lot more room than just dropping a hook in the water, I guess.

It was a very nice weekend, if short. It would be nice to spend a week there; maybe we'll get to do that again sometime. On Sunday we went by the nature interpretive center, which was fun. We hadn't been there in a long time.

We got home mid-afternoon on Sunday, and I did my work, and everything was fine. I'm still a little stressed out, but it definitely helped to get away, if only briefly.

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Just a quick note

I had a list of stuff that I wanted to accomplish this weekend. I didn't get everything done, but I did make a LOT of sets of stitch markers, which was one of the main things. Not stitch markers per se, but the store was getting kind of sparse and I wanted to get some inventory built up.

I put about a dozen sets up for sale, and I have probably another half-dozen that I need to photograph and post. And I want to make a bunch more earrings. I also made some bracelets for a friend for a custom order as a birthday present for a little girl, and those were fun to make. I want to do some more of that. Here are some of them:

Apart from the jewelry making frenzy, not much went on this weekend. Which is exactly the way I like it.

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New phone

I got a new phone over the weekend. I didn't really need a new phone, the old one still worked, but I'd had it for about 2-1/2 years, and could get a good deal on an upgrade. And I've wanted the pink Razr ever since it comes out, and frankly, I was a little afraid that if I waited much longer, they wouldn't have them any longer. Obsessive, I know.

There are three shades of pink, this is the middle one -- there's a paler pink, and a magenta one -- each of which are offered by a different cell phone provider. I'm with Cingular (now AT&T), and they have this one, which has kind of a salmony-cast to it. It's actually not as light as this picture shows.

Like I said, I didn't really need a new phone, but the camera was getting pretty bad, and while that's certainly not a vital component of a phone, I do like having it. Anyway, I went ahead and got it. The deal they offered was $100, with a $50 rebate. I could also have upgraded to a newer version for an additional $50, but I didn't feel like I could justify that, and I didn't like the color as well. Yeah, I know it's not important, but it kind of is.

And the camera is a lot better.

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