Holiday update

Feasting: Check. Vegetarian roast beast, garlic mashed potatoes, mushroom and onion gravy, pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate silk pie, and fresh-baked sugar cookies. Mmmm.

Shopping : Check-ish. Although not much got accomplished. We braved the crowds, which weren’t as insane as they could have been. But we did very little purchasing. More like browsing for ideas.

Decorating: Check. There’s still much to do, but we got the main tree up and decorated, the mantle wreath ditto, the entertainment center ditto, and the stairs. Still to do: Hobkin’s tree and area, my “birthday” tree decorating, and various counter-top tableaux.

Skunk Trauma : Check. Apparently abandoning the small fuzzwit for several hours for two days in a row was too much for his sense of safety and security. He was skittish and anxious all day yesterday, a state not alleviated one iota by the judicious use of the vacuum cleaner (to clean up the dusting of faux evergreen nettles littering the carpet from our holiday decorating efforts). He huddled under his hutch in terror, and then when we were able to coax him out, he clung to me with a dedicated tenacity for the rest of the night. He’s currently curled up peacefully in my lap, exuding an aura of “all is well.” But I think that means we can’t go out today.

Writing Stuff
Um, well, I certainly intended to get some writing done this weekend, but my intentions went astray. There’s still a chance of me getting some words on the page, or maybe some editing accomplished, but I wouldn’t bet on it if I were a gambling type.

My Tangent reviews of Sci-Fiction stories “All of Us Can Almost . . . ” by Carol Emshwiller and “Super 8” by Terry Bisson have been published. Rah.

In slightly worrisome news, I still have yet to hear from John Frost of IROSF after a query regarding my “Sub-Genre Spotlight: Cyberpunk” article, which, if they follow their new publication schedule, is due to go up tomorrow. Certainly there’s a holiday lag to be expected, but it’s due up tomorrow and I have not yet seen a contract. Hmm.