On a whim last week, I tried tethering my laptop to my phone and connecting to the internet right from my own house, which has never worked. Strangely, it now DOES work. It’s been working consistently all week! Is it the weather? The season? Generic tecnology weirdness? I have no idea. But — newsflash! — it’s amazing how addictive and distracting the internet can be, if you can actually connect to it whenever you want!
Despite this new connectivity experience, I have reached 100 pages (32,000 words) on my new WIP! This is four complete chapters. It isn’t actually great progress, considering that I had about fifty pages in place when I started working on it (on Jan 1st). But it’ll do. Hey, it was a busy, busy Christmas break. Now that I’m at a stopping point, I think I will email my agent, send her the revised ms for THE MOUNTAIN OF KEPT MEMORY, and ask for her comments on the revised copy of the other WIP ms she has right now. I don’t mind going back to revisions now that I’ve made somethig resembling progress on a new project. Wish me luck in the coming year! I should have no fewer than four complete mss by the end of the year, all of which I hope wil have found a home, one way or another, by this time in 2014.
So, Dad finished installing the new shelves he made for me! Yay! Having one of youer nearest and dearest be handy with carpentry is an excellent thing. I spent the afternoon moving books and shelving the stacks that used to be piled on the floor. I now have lots of room to expand. I estimate it’ll take two years before I am again pressed for space. By then I will probably have a kindle or nook or something and space will be a lot less of a concern.
And! Almost better than actually getting new shelves, since Dad had the paint out, I asked him to put some aside for me, and spent more of the afternoon scrubbing woodwork around the house and touching up the paint. It’s all a creamy white, which is beautiful, but GOOD LORD was it showing wear! The dogs do not understand why they can’t sit on their windowsill tonight. I assured them that tomorrow they will have a beautiful clean windowsill to sit on. I also have the front door blocked off with an X-pen, the single most useful item I own that normal pet owners don’t even know about. I use it ALL THE TIME to keep dogs away from seedlings under the lights or confine a dog after surgery or to block off wet paint or, for that matter, actually as a pen when I’m showing four of them at one show or whatever.
Tomorrow I will put another coat of paint on the baby gates (which had puppy toothmarks all over them) and do more windowsill and cabinet doors until I run out of paint. Painting windowsills and stuff is an oddly satisfying activity; hopefully I will remember that and not wait ten years before touching up the paint again.
Next for the evening: choosing a book to read. I figure, hey, last weekend of Christmas break, I may as well actually take a break, right? I’m leaning toward THE KILLING MOON by NK Jemisin.
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