Adenosine "Addy" Triphosphate

On Wednesday, we said good-bye to Addy. She had been a part of our family for eight and a half years.

As the runt of a litter, Addy always had a wonky health problem to deal with. Nothing major but usually nothing easily diagnosed or treated. About two years ago, she started having some problems with her kidneys, but with the right diet and a few living adjustments, she seemed to adapt and keep up her usual activities and attitude.

Last weekend, I noticed that she felt ridiculously light when I picked her up, and she seemed lethargic and just generally out of sorts. We kept an eye on her with a mind toward gathering info before calling the vet. Then Wednesday morning she couldn't move her back legs and didn't seem to want to move much at any rate.

The vet told us we wouldn't be able to restore her health, that the best we could do was try to manage Addy's pain and stay perhaps one step ahead of her acute renal failure. That would involve a lot of procedures and therapies for a cat already too frail to even hold her head up. It really wasn't much of a choice.

I've got a lot of great memories of this cat, a wonderful companion I picked up from the Longmont Humane Society when she was only a few weeks old not too long after I had started grad school. She didn't care for Mark when he moved in a few months later, and only deigned to sit on him whenever she needed to fart. When Drew came along, she learned that the best way to get our undivided attention and demand petting was when we were stuck on the toilet. And as her health declined the past year or so, she still had to sleep snuggled up in the crook of my arm every night. She loved helping me with my work and writing and could often be found on a pile of papers on the desk next to me or sitting sentinel beside the laptop, watching a novel take shape.

She also enjoyed sneaking into closets and curling up in a dark corner on a pile of old shirts or pants. Of course, by the time she'd had her fill of the seclusion, we'd be elsewhere in the house or away at work, and she'd be stuck in the closet. Many times since Wednesday, I've found myself automatically sliding the closet door shut behind me whenever I step in to get dressed to prevent her from secreting away inside. That's when her loss hits me the hardest, when I'm aware of the ways we adjusted our habits and patterns around her quirks, and now those adjustments are not necessary.

Hitting the Ground Running

Whew. We've officially moved. Mark started his new job today. Drew is slowly but surely adjusting. The cats are pissed.

I was all set to start breathing normally today, but we found a house that we absolutely love on our way back from dropping off the moving truck yesterday. Long story short: we put a 48-hr hold on it so we could do some heavy-duty research and number-crunching and figure out if it's going to work. Yeah, crazy to think that by mid-week, we could be homeowners. It's especially crazy when you consider that I'm going back to Colorado this Thursday and Friday for the DDJ.

Did you hear that high-pitched scream? It's either me or the cats.

I'm looking forward to getting some writing time finally this weekend. I really, really need it. A longer post with more details of the past couple of weeks of insanity should be landing on the blog by Sunday.

My Characters are Characters

The cat's stopped hanging out on the changing table. Then she started cleeping in the crib. Once that stopped, she began to sleep in the stroller. Well, we now keep the stroller collapsed in the car so now she sleeps in the nursery rocking chair. And that would be fine, except that I've been sitting there a lot lately as Drew goes through a Momma's Boy phase where I either have to be in his direct line of sight, looking at him as well or I have to be holding him. Since I'm going back to work in less than two weeks (more on this later), I don't mind. And today I'm going to try to start sitting at my desk and writing--in the boy's line of sight of course--and see if that will work. That should make Addy happy. She seems to really like the rocking chair, and I'm very happy that she's not hanging out in the crib anymore.

But on to that writing stuff I hope to do. I was plugging along just fine in SoD until I brought the first ten pages to my critique group. Well, I have to be honest, I was coming up against a block in the new stuff too. The group gave me great comments, and I finally figured out how to adjust the opening to ease the reader into backstory and character introductions without a ton of confusion. So I wrote a new scene and now I need to rewrite one scene from another POV. Then I can get back to the brand new stuff. But in order to do the rewrite and move forward, I knew that I needed to get a better grip on my characters' motivations. That would help solidify their actions later in the book and just generally make me feel less like I was pulling everything from Drew's diaper pail.

I chose to unravel character motivations and a few pesky backstory questions by doing that "talk to your character" thing. I've never been good at this. In fact, it only really worked once for me while I was writing The Masque. In that case, I grilled my character as if I were a psychiatrist asking her why she had chosen to start a bar brawl. I decided to give it a try with my SoD POV characters and see what happened. I began each "session" with the quesiton "What do you want most in life?" And then each session took on its own flavor as the characters answered. I'm of two minds about the success of this. The first is a "yay me" attitude. I mean, I've obviously created some great characters if they actually answer me in their own voice and can influence the tenor of an exercise like this with their personality. The second is a profound desire to stay off the shrink's couch myself. Do I really want to know what the success of this sort of exercise means for my already questionable sanity?

Seriously, this was a great tool for me. I learned a lot about characters I already thought I had well pegged. I realized that I still have trouble delving into my heroes, but my heroines and villains are easy as pie. And I also figured out that my hero is going to be much easier to deal with once he meets the heroine. She's going to drive him so crazy, that he'll want someone to talk to. And I'll be waiting to catch every word. And it's OK until they meet because he's getting his ass chased all over the world by the bad guys, so he doesn't have much to do beyond react for the first part of the book. Plenty of conflict there, even if I don't know what makes him tick, or if I don't believe that he's as simple as he's telling me right now. I also got a better handle on later events with this exercise.

I've still got two more characters to put on the couch, and I'm looking forward to what they're going to tell me. And I'm going to conveniently forget any rational concerns about my mental well-being. I'll save that for my memoirs after I sell my fiftieth novel. :)

Creature Comforts

The snow, while pretty, didn't exactly get me raring to go outside and get to work this morning. So I decided to forego the journalling (with the Addy Cat sitting watch next to me) in favor of snuggling under a blanket on the couch and cuddling with Nosey, our "I think I may be canine" cat. Her warm fur and more than enthusiastic purring and meows gave me the smiles and energy I needed to get out the door.

A Cat, A Movie, A Writer, and Time

But maybe not in that order. I've realized that time for blogging is going to be sparse during the week. So I need to get in the habit of posting my long, thought-provoking, challenging material (OK, stop laughing) on the weekends and post the quickies during the week. So here's my first attempt.

Addy was so sweet this morning. She purred really loudly (something unusual for her) when I wrote my Morning Pages in the study this morning next to where she was perched, just as I did for most of the summer. I didn't have to touch her or even look at her, just be with her. That's reason enough for me to make sure I always do my Morning Pages there from now on. Sweet kitty.

And the best news I've heard in a while is that Mel Brooks hoping to release a sequel to "Spaceballs" the week before Star Wars Episdoe III. Very exciting. I've been trying to find some kind of link for this info, but have failed. The only confirmation Brooks made was that he had written himself into the sequel.

I got a good laugh this morning from Teresa's blog. Turns out a writer has decided to auction his manuscript on Ebay. He apparently doesn't want to go through that whole "vanity press" publishing hassle, so he's hoping some Big Name Author will find his manuscript and snatch it up for $150,000 and put their name on it (he grants that they might want to change the title) and sell it as their own for megabucks. Beyond the obvious comments, I wanted to point out that the author refuses to email his manuscript to an interested buyer for fear of that person "stealing [his] story and putting there [sic] name on it." Which I suppose I can understand not wanting someone to do this for free when he's trying to make money on it, but it just seemed odd that he says this as part of an explanation asking a big name author to do that very same thing. He also states frequently that both English teachers AND professors have read the manuscript and love it. I wonder when this man gave up on trying to go the traditional publishing route. It sounds like he hasn't even finished the thing yet, let alone gone through a round or ten of revisions (and judging from his writing explaining the auction, ten rounds would be the minimum number required, I think). Good for a laugh, and Teresa's discussion of it is good for more excellent thoughts on vanity presses.

Back I go to work.

Stereotypical Failure

Well, if all full-time writers sit around in their extravagant pyjamas, eat bonbons, and fight through their hungover stupor to squeeze out a few words, then I'm in trouble. It didn't work for me. I finished one scene and started into another one, only to stall out, despite the silky nightgown and fistfuls of chocolate. I don't think the alcoholic haze would've helped. To be fair, the real problem was an uncertainty as to how the next couple scenes would play out after the one I was writing. I kept thinking about what I had to do after I finished what I was writing at the moment. Couldn't concentrate. I took a break and read some of Kushiel's Dart. Which led to me reading for the rest of the night. Here are the excuses I used for not delving back into the problem scene: Addy had stolen my chair again and slept in it for the rest of the day (and into the night); I didn't feel like changing out of my black silkish pyjamas; the book was really, really good and thus could be construed as research.

The plus side of yesterday's splurge was my inspiration for query letters. I keep thinking about my novel in terms of explaining how something like Brave New World can happen. Yet I've never used that thought in how I describe my book to editors, agents, even friends. So I grabbed Mark's copy of Huxley's book to flip through today, trying to remember if Huxley had put forth some sort of history of how Things Transpired to create his world. In Huxley's foreword, he says that the folks in charge of his world aim to create social stability: "It is in order to achieve stability that they carry out, by scientific means, the ultimate, personal, really revolutionary revolution."

And there it is. Exactly what I was looking for. The connection between HD and Brave New World. I had suspected it was there, and even known it, but had never been able to articulate it. Because that statement sums up Eugene Weber damn near perfectly. The road to hell.... And now I have something concrete to use in my query letters. Said in humble terms that could in no way be interpreted as comparing my book to Huxley's. My book, if anything, aims to be a prequel to Huxley's. A potential prequel. To explain in no uncertain terms how exactly such things can come to be. Oddly enough, that was always my biggest question when I had to read BNW in school. And it was never explained adequately to me. And my reading of BNW was poorer for it because I had a big question mark preventing me from accepting Huxley's future. Which would explain why the original idea of HD stuck with me in the first place, three and a half years ago.

I owe Aldous Huxley and Brave New World more than I realized. Damn. Guess that means I need to reread the book.

New Year, New Rooms

It all started when I realized that I don't like the couch we snagged from my father a few years back. It's the couch that my family bought ten or twelve years ago. And four cats and a dog have, at various points during that time, added to the demise of this piece of furniture. Addy and Nosey have done the most damage, probably mostly Nosey with the daggers she used to have. It's got that "I've been around for a decade or more" musty smell. And the sofa's sleeper mattress is about as comfortable as a bed of assorted and ill-placed rocks. At some point while we were in Oklahoma, I saw one of those "no interest financing until 2007" commercials for a furniture store and realized we had a way out of Couch Hell. I brought this up to Mark, and he agreed we could take a peek at what was available and consider our budget.

Tuesday night we decided to peruse the sofa selection. (This was after we went to two Best Buy stores in attempts to spend the gift certificate my father and stepmother gave us. What kind of idiot buys only 19 copies of "Pirates of the Caribbean" for a store the week after Christmas? This same idiot will apparently keep the store stocked with at least 200 copies of "SWAT".) We wandered the store's showroom, finding a few possibilities. Then we found it. The color was perfect, the style was perfect, the price was pretty good. The store only had no interest financing for a couple months, though. Thus began the budgeting discussion. I might point out that I was the voice of caution in this talk. Mostly. OK, so I did say (once) that we could make the old couch work, I wouldn't like, but we'd make it work. But only once and it was uttered between two very serious financial concerns. But Mark said we could afford it. So we bought the couch. And the chair and ottoman to go with it. I still have trouble figuring out how that happened. I can follow the logic, but it was just so different from my expectations and even wishes for the furniture shopping night.

Buying new furniture means you have to make room for it. We were up past midnight after we chose the sofa, preparing the apartment for it. This involved rearranging the study - something I had already been thinking of doing before the sofa issue. My desk had been crammed into a corner and the entire layout of the room seemed contrary to what I needed in a writing environment. Not that it had been a problem since I was revising and using the dining room table to get more space. But I imagined it would become a problem in 2004 as I started writing new stuff again. So Mark and I tossed around some ideas and came up with a great new look for the study.

Both new rooms were put to the test yesterday. Our furniture was delivered bright early in the morning (7:30 - we went back to sleep after it arrived). Mark watched football on the new chair and promptly approved of it by falling asleep in it. Nosey immediately found a new perch on the ottoman and the sofa back. Addy is still on the fence about the new furniture, but she loves the new study set up. We moved our old chair into that room. This chair has been Addy's favorite sleeping spot. She really enjoys its new location. It's much more secluded than it used to be, and a little patch of sun hits it. In fact, Addy so loves the new spot that I had to fight her for it yesterday. I would get up to take a quick break from writing and go back to find my cat curled up and sleeping on the chair. This continued all day long. I also like the new set ups. The chair in the study became an excellent spot for revising. And my computer is more accessible now, allowing me to spend quite some time last night grabbing songs of my CDs so I can put together novel-appropriate playlists.

It's nice to start the new year with obvious physical changes. Makes it easier to work on those internal changes. More thoughts on what I hope to change internally later. The ideas are still rather nebulous in my brain, but I do know it involves the concept of balance.

Mud, and Other Fun News

Addy and Nosey have officially been renamed. Their new names are "Mud". For the past two weeks, I've tried to make a loaf of bread in our fancy schmancy bread machine. I'd put in all the ingredients in the right order, program it, and come home to find a nice ball of dough instead of a loaf of bread. We've tried a few different things to rule out user error. This morning's experiment was to not use a delay cycle at all, just get the darn thing mixing right away. I was fairly confident that this would work. I come home after a rather long day (See "Other News") to find the bread machine pulled out of the socket, tossed on the kitchen floor, the door ripped off (nice bits of plastic where hinges used to be), and the bread pan itself upended with a nice ball of dough sitting on the kitchen floor.

The kitties were name "Mud" shortly thereafter.

And the mystery of The Bread Machine goes into the "Cold Case" file.

Other News: So on top of training someone to replace me and getting trained for a new job, I had to drive down to Denver this morning and take care of my follow-up appointment for that icky sleep study I did a month ago. I had a few blips that put one of my numbers into a category just outside of normal, but I don't have sleep apnea. Which I pretty much figured would be the case. Nothing is ever simple when it comes to my medical life. But the doctor did offer suggestions to prevent the fun sleep episodes I do have. She suggested that my acid reflux, which hasn't bothered me too much since junior high, may be acting up just enough to mess around with my throat and make the muscles close up at night. So it's time to start taking some Tagamet stuff just before bed. And she also suggested that my constantly stuffed nose may be affecting things by draining into my throat at night. So it's time to start flushing my sinuses out on a regular basis. She also thinks the stuffed nose may be the biggest culprit behind my dizziness. We'll see.

As for the new job, things finally started to feel good there today. They had to set up a whole new desk for me (including computer, chair, phone, etc) and it didn't look like it was going to happen any time soon until today. Finally things started happening to get me up and running. Which did wonders for my attitude. I felt like I could finally get into a new routine. Very nice. I just can't wait until I'm settled. Friggin' change is never enjoyable.

Further Evidence

In case you missed the facts that our cats are named Adenosine Triphosphate (Addy) and Inosine (Nosey), that we spent four hours hashing out how to calculate the location of a moon on a planet's horizon, that we laughed at the interchangeable way "cancer vaccine" and "cancer drug" were used in Mary Higgins Clark's The Second Time Around, and that our Saturday morning channel of choice is The Discovery Channel, let me provide yet another clue confirming that Mark and Kellie are nerds. This was the gift Mark brought home for me from Cold Spring Harbor. And, as I put on the bracelet, Mark mentioned that he didn't get a chance to see if the helix had both a major groove and a minor groove. I promptly took off the bracelet to examine it, and we both concluded that it doesn't. It's still pretty cool, though.

Two Nights Down, Two More to Go

Mark's off in Cold Spring Harbor, bumping shoulders with important colleagues in the RNA field. And raising more than a few glasses of wine with them too. Rumor has it that Watson celebrated a birthday there last week, which may explain why he hasn't been sighted at the conference this week (a scientific birthday party may just give you a weeklong hangover). So while I'm very happy that Mark is there - networking, getting his research known, finding potential contacts for jobs after he gets his PhD - I'm not happy that I'm without my husband.

I would hazard a guess that most newlyweds don't like to spend time apart. In the nearly eleven months we've been married, I've had to go out of town for a couple days here and there. Actually, the whole time we've been living together (about 2.5 years), I've always been the one zipping hither and thither for a random conference, retreat, or visit. I've never had to experience what it's like to be home alone while Mark was off gallavanting somewhere. And I don't like it.

What's more, the cats don't like it either. This is a new twist for them, too. Mark tells me that they get all cuddly with him when I go away. So I figured that's what they'd do when Mark went away. Nope. Those cats are moping worse than I am. Even *my* cat Addy. This is the cat that would only sit on Mark's lap to fart when he first moved in. I spent the night being lazy in front of the TV, watching reruns. Nosey occasionally snuggled up to me and demanded attention. But Addy plopped herself on the floor and hawked the doorway, as if waiting for Mark to get home. When we go to bed, Nosey is right there waiting for more attention, and she usually commandeers at least half of Mark's pillow or mine to sleep. But not the past two nights. I've barely seen her in the bed.

So now I'm really upset because not only is Mark not here, but the cats are missing him too much to comfort me in his absence. This sucks.

So Tired

Ugh, it's going to be one of those Mondays. I slept on my shoulder wrong, I had a bad dream about my cat choking on pennies and needing CPR (I have never claimed to accept responsibility for what my subconcious spits out at night), and I'm ready for a four hour nap. So, ugh. I'm supposed to do some worldbuilding today, but coherent thought is difficult (I'm really surprised I can even write this). On the plus side, I have now gone through my entire music collection and ripped the songs I wanted for my Media Player Library. And I wrote 1800 words yesterday in Red Rocks. Next week, Mark will be out of town at a conference, and I plan to get a lot of writing and revising done then. Well, I won't have much of a choice, seeing as how I don't sleep well at all when Mark's not here. Better to get something done than stare at the ceiling until exhaustion kicks in. Damn, I'm really tired. I started salivating at the idea of just laying in bed.

To the Bugs Around our Apartment

We have cats. And all my shoes are now easily accessible in our roomy walk-in closet. Do I need to set up a little Tower of London-ish display outside our door showing the crumpled spiders that have had the misfortune to disrupt my morning workout? Do we need to release the beetle that said cats have been toying with this week so he can tell his harrowing tale of torture at Addy's and Nosey's paws? I feel confident that such unsavory tactics will not be required because I'm willing to assume that you are smart bugs. You will notice that Bob the Beetle has been missing for quite some time now and that you haven't seen Sally the Spider and her sister Suzy for far too long. You will get the point. And for those of you that don't, you have been warned about the cats and shoes.

And Yet Another Round of Excuses

The top one this time is that this weekend is a Monthly Marathon at Forward Motion, and I can use that to push me into finishing Human Dignity. The others are the same as Wednesday. Last night was a real downer at home because Nosey was running a bit of a temperature when we picked her up from the vet and we were told to monitor her temp four times a day. Nosey will not let us take her temperature. She very nearly bit Mark escaping our last try (as she scampered away with the thermometer still, um, inserted). We think we managed to get her temp with that little escapade, and her temp is lower than what the vets were concerned about. But we're not quite sure that was her actual temp. She's behaving very normal, as is Addy. Their paws are still swollen and they are clumsy with them, but they're starting to spend time out from under the beds. Still I was really worried last night that Nosey would be very sick and we couldn't tell because we couldn't handle her in such a way as to get her temp.

But I'm really excited and certain that I'll finish this darn first book this weekend (well, the first draft of it, at any rate). And then I can start revising it. And I've been looking forward to that for a long time. I've got some great ideas for the problem areas I'm already fully aware exist, and I'm getting better at finding the rest on my own. I'm really hoping I can revise this thing by July, but I think it'll be much more conspicuous to work on that at work than it was to write at work. I'll have to play around with some options.

More Excuses

Still not finished with the draft of the book. Still two chapters away. Need the fire under my posterior and fast. My excuses? Hmmm, let's see. There's usually at least two. The first is that Mark and I had to drop of the kitties at the vet this morning so they could get declawed. And I swung back and forth on this issue so much over the past year. But they were just so scared this morning. Addy kept clinging to me, even though she was hissing at me. And Nosey kept up this pitiful meow the whole way there in the car. We can visit them tonight, and we probably will. If I can get over my immense guilt at what I put them through today.

Excuse Number Two? My work buds did a fantabulous job of distracting me today from Excuse Number One. It's been a while since I've laughed this much. The laughter is also distracting me from Excuse Number Three, which I touched on briefly in yesterday's post. It shall, of course, remain shrouded in mystery until that time in which it will become not so shrouded. Yes, it's been one of those days.

Back

So I got back a day early. My brother left for Phoenix yesterday so he could get all his stuff from Mom's (including his car), so I certainly had nothing keeping me in San Diego until today. So I hopped on an afternoon flight yesterday to get back home. The real truth is, I didn't want to be away from Mark any longer. In less than two weeks, we spent five days apart between my trip to San Diego and the Director's Workshop. And it really took it's toll on me. Him and Addy, too. :) Nosey was perfect as punch, though, having got rid of her competition (me) for so many days. She's been trying the tactic of showering me with affection recently. I'll bet she figures that she can lure me into a fall sense of security and then off me. Well, we'll just see about that.

I was going to finish my book today, but I'm exhausted. The last two weeks have been insane, and I think my bod's just realized that I can take a rest now. That, and all the dramamine and adavant in my system the last week can't be helping anything. This blog is usually a barometer for my writing, and seeing as how I can't even work up the energy to post about my trip to San Diego or even the MRI speaks volumes. So tomorrow will be the big day. I'm going to focus my energy (the little of it I have) today on just chilling, maybe catching "Finding Nemo" and relaxing.

The Cats' Revenge and Other Stories

OK, as promised, I will now divulge the funny but, erm, not so funny pet story. It's Thursday morning. And I'm enjoying doing up my eyes with the new blue eyeliner I got a while back (I know, the excitement of my life approaches astounding levels). I'm admiring my straight lines when Mark yelps from the other room. Or maybe he just yelled "Argh" in true piratey fashion. The memory is beginning to fade. At any rate, I have to ask what happened. You just don't ignore either a yelp or piratey bellow that comes from somewhere in your own apartment. In an angry but oddly defeated voice, Mark yells, "The cats pissed on my bookbag!" At first I'm shocked. Any litterbox accidents are usually committed on a particularly clean and convenient spot of carpet. Then I remembered that we were a bit out of sorts Monday night, the usual Litterbox night. So I asked Mark if he had been able to clean the litterboxes this week. And he said no. This was when I started to laugh. Because it seemed that either or both kitties had decided to exact a little revenge on the man who had neglected their restrooms. I tried to stay my amusement after Mark informed me that the cats had urinated on the notes he needed for the paper he was writing for his class. My attempts met with varying levels of success. The least successful attempts, unfortunately, always occurred when I saw Mark that morning. I would move into the living room to look at the paper, see Mark, and giggle. I just couldn't help it. I did eventually tease a chuckle out of Mark, so I figured everything was good. Until he came home that night and proceeded to eye both Addy and Nosey with a suspicious gaze. I even began to wonder if he would take the kitties aside one by one and interrogate them, using Python's Spanish Inquisition tactics (which the cats would, of course, never expect). But this tale does have a happy ending. The (hehe) soiled notes have been copied (alas, the happy ending does not extend to the Xerox machine involved in said duplication), Mark has realized the felines are not talking, and the litterboxes are clean.

In other news, I was hoping to do a little worldbuilding today. I still may, but I'm dragging my feet. Which surprises me. I came up with some good ideas last weekend. Maybe it's just being tired and feeling a little down. Actually, I'm feeling pretty powerless about some work issues. Which, of course, I can't talk about until they are officially announced. Suffice to say, I may be looking for another job so I don't have to put up with the crap. But I really don't want to, because then I'd start trying to find a job using my degree, and I really don't want to do that. And Mark wants me to stay put so I can write as well (I still find it amazing that he can, without trying, remind me almost on a daily basis why I love him and why I married him). So more on that probably next week.

Blame the Cats: Only written 400 hundred words today so far. I'm aiming for 3k. It's the cats fault. They're being so lazy and cute and cuddly. I took a break to read a book for a few minutes. But then both cats snuggled up with me and those few minutes turned into two hours. I suppose it didn't help that I was likely looking for an excuse to be lazy, either. I guess I haven't gotten tired of lounging around and doing next to nothing. Probably a side effect of working so hard for the past fifteen years and not having to anymore. It's nice not to push myself. It's nice to "waste" time reading a ton of books and watching fun movies and pampering myself. But the moments where I am impatient to get this book finished keep snapping me out of my laziness. Same with the knowledge that I'm working fourty plus hours a week as a secretary and I certainly don't want to be doing that for the rest of my life. Maybe I should schedule in some lazy time in the grid I created yesterday. Write for two hours and then do whatever the heck I want for two hours, then write for another two hours. Maybe that's the way to wean me off this habitual laziness. And if that's the case, then it's time to write for another two hours.

Kellie the Ruthless Fairhair: Well, that's a mesh of the two viking names I was given this morning. Kellie Fairhair and Kellie the Ruthless. I like the combination of the two. It might not be truly a viking name anymore, but it works for me!

Chorus rehearsal was great last night! Sharon was back, we had a guest director, everyone paid attention and focused. It was so nice to have a good night. I'm actually looking forward to competition now. And it encourages me for afterwards, too. But I still need to chat with Sharon and Edie about my directing responsibilities. I think I either need to cut back or just get more regular "lessons" from Sharon or Edie. At any rate, what's happening with directing now is not working.



Random Link of the Day: While researching cat declawing procedures, I came across a site that finally outlined all the procedures available and the pros & cons. All in a fairly objective manner. I was impressed.

Addy stole my notes for a new novel idea. I had a sudden inspiration last night, scribbled the ideas down on post-it notes, and left said notes on the night stand. I woke up to find them missing. Rat cat. Thank goodness I remember practically everything I wrote. Lousy kitty. But she's so cute. Can't be mad at her for too long. Back to writing I go. Here's hoping for a couple thousand words today.