KJ

I'm going to get her after lunch. She's still going to be recovering for awhile, but she's strong enough to finish her recovery at home. Yay!

( Medical details. )

Thank you, everyone, for your kind comments the past couple of days. Sorry not to respond to everyone directly. I heard from the vet, and it sounds like Tori is better. ( Cut for medical details. )

If all goes well, they expect to release her this evening, although they may need her to come back for follow-up, further testing, etc. But I'm sure she'll be happier at home.

I had a fun weekend but it involved a lot of running around, and now I am sick. Not super-sick, but low energy, achy throat, and I totally thrashed my voice. Now I have to decide whether to keep a lunch engagement on Wednesday. It involves a friend I haven't seen in ages, so I hate to cancel, but I might not have much choice. Guess I'll sit on it for a day.

What else... I finished my DABB draft, for certain values of "finished", with a day to spare. There's a lot of work left to do, but it's in pretty good shape, and I have at least a month to work on it, so I'm not too worried. In the meantime, I started something for the Chocobo Races (yes, really), and I have ideas for my dragonageholidaycheer gift. Given the due dates, I should probably work on the latter first, but it's the former that's claiming my attention at the moment.

In the rest of life, still no job leads yet, but that's okay with the holidays coming up. We leave for T's mom's place a week from today, and we'll be there most of the following week.

And that's it for me right now. How are you?

Jet lag, or something, is seriously kicking my ass the last couple of days, so I haven't had much brainpower to post about anything, including the rest of the trip and coming back. But I will do pictures and such eventually. Pompeii was awesome, but it was also hot and tiring, and I never really had time to recover from it before I had to get on a plane. I suspect that's part of what wiped me out so much.

I've mostly been able to keep up with the journals, but if I've missed anything important, drop me a line!

Welcome to 2012, everybody.

I like the look of this date. It's visually very well balanced to me. Much more so than 2011, which might explain why it was such an off-kilter year for almost everyone I know. Not that I really believe in things like that. But it's still an interesting thought.

The New Year is one of my favorite holidays -- fresh starts are always appealing to me, as are the small rituals around the change: buying a calendar, gathering with friends, counting down the seconds to midnight, toasts and cheers and butchering the words to "Auld Lang Syne".

I don't like putting too much pressure around a new year being a change from the last, but I do enjoy looking at it as an opportunity to take a breath, take stock, let go of whatever things are dogging you from the last twelve months. 2011 was a transition year for me, with changes everywhere: at work, especially, but also a little in my personal life, my online life, my fandom life. So I'm looking at 2012 as a time to settle things back down, get used to all these new things and figure out how to move forward from here.

Cheers to all for a better 2012!

Visiting T's mom in San Diego. Earlier today, T installed a wireless router, so I am Internet-enabled on my own computer, which is pretty awesome. Makes a nice change from past visits, where I was stuck on either my phone or her Windows box. Also, can I just wax poetic for a minute about how much easier it is to travel with my new Air than when I was lugging my old MacBook around? It's just not even worth comparing them.

On the downside, I have a cold and therefore zero energy. Stupid cold, ruining my getaway weekend. Although I suppose at least it provides me a good excuse to keep things low key.

I could only mope around the house watching Gilmore Girls for so long. So I came out to Panera. Good coffee, good bagel, and the drugs are helping too. I also seem to be writing my first ever FFXII fic that isn't based on a prompt; we'll see what comes of it.

As for Gilmore Girls, I just finished the third season and watched the first episode of the fourth. ( A few stray thoughts... )

Okay, back to writing before the drugs and caffeine wear off. Hope you are all having a splendid Monday.

It figures that I would get struck by a cold that's making it hard to concentrate on anything just in time for NaBloWriMo. Yeah, I'm going to do it. Or I'm going to try, anyway. Maybe I'll fail on the first day, but at least I will have tried.

Journaling goals:

1. Write and publish at least one unlocked post every day.

2. A check-in post about writing progress counts as a post, but I can only use that as my sole post three days a week.

3. At least four substantial posts per week.

Writing goals:

1. Write something every day.

2. Make progress on Aftermath. (Poor, poor Aftermath.)

3. Finish at least two outstanding request fics, ideally more.

4. Post a completed story at least once per week.

No wordcount goals, either monthly or daily -- those don't work particularly well for me. I do intend to get back into making the charts, though. I do enjoy my charts.

Also, my cheering hat for those of you doing NaNo is firmly on! Let me know if you ever need a boost. :)

Summer break, woo! It was a couple of crazy quarters there, but now it's over. Three weeks with no students, and now that the various meetings that cap the whole thing off are done I can actually relax.

Unfortunately, we don't actually get three weeks off. When I tell people I work at a college and that summer break is started, they tend to assume that I get three weeks of vacation, but no such luck. I am, however, taking a week on my own -- tomorrow night, I fly to Boston, from where I will finally make the pilgrimage to Ben & Jerry's (and cross Vermont off the list of states I haven't visited! Which will finish off New England, at long last) and then spend a few days hanging out with amybang and anzubird -- we're planning on a visit to Provincetown, if the rain doesn't wash it away, and other fun stuff. I get back next Tuesday.

Let's see, what else... the poison oak has almost faded, although I'm still peeling in places and have to fend off the occasional itching fit. I got a new keyboard to replace the one that died a couple of months ago -- it was getting old anyway, I think I bought it in 2000 when I got my G3 tower, but spilling a Diet Coke on it pretty much sealed its fate. Sadly, pretty much no one is making natural-style split keyboards for Macs anymore, probably because PC keyboards will work on a Mac now. So I got an MS Natural. It seems weird to be enthusiastic about a Microsoft product, but the shape of their natural keyboards works pretty much perfectly with my RSI issues, and the keys are incredibly responsive. I have one at work, too, so I knew I'd be happy with it. But I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted, so I bit the bullet and upgraded my OS to Leopard. On the plus side, the upgrade seems to have finally fixed my flaky wireless; fingers crossed that keeps working. In other technology news, I became an iPhone widow on Friday. T ordered it the day they were announced and started counting the hours, and it has gone above and beyond his expectations. I confess that seeing his in action has only increased temptation for me, but for now I'm still holding out.

In the media world, I finally got around to restarting Phoenix Wright 3, which I half-gave up on in the middle of the third case. Now I'm into the fifth case, which is awesome, but I can't talk about why without spoilers. So for right now, I'll content myself with sharing this fact: Diego Armando? Is HOT. As for books, right now I'm reading The Fall of Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman; it's enjoyable, but I have no idea how they wrote it before The Privilege of the Sword without having mapped out that entire book first. Finally, I watched the first two episodes of Merlin, thanks to bottle_of_shine's rec. I enjoyed it, although it took me most of the first episode to get past the expectation that the characters would conform to standard Arthurian canon. I knew going in, of course, that Merlin was Arthur's age, so I didn't mind that at all, but there were enough other differences that I found it jarring at first. Fortunately, by the time I watched the second ep, I was able to sit back and relax into the characters as they were. I think Guenevere is my favorite so far, but only two eps in is a little soon to be making predictions. I'll keep watching for sure.

I guess that sums it up for now. I know I haven't been very visible here lately, in terms of posting or commenting, partly because of the poison oak and partly from work stress, but with luck this break will be just what I need to straighten my head out and spend more time being active and less time spacing out.

In the San Diego airport. T brought his laptop, which has a Verizon wireless card, so I'm taking advantage. It's been a good trip, more details later. The weather here is stunning. Now the airport is a zoo -- there was some rowing meet here, so we're overrun by tanned, fit, college students. Boarding soon, time to sign off. Hope everyone had a good weekend. Zoom!