I don’t know why, but it’s been a long week. But the proposal for the fifth Walker Papers is turned in, and I’ve given up on NNWM. I’m going to write the Morrigan short story next week, and if I get done with that before the end of the week I’ll go back to NNWM and do as much as I can, but copy edits for PRETENDER’S CROWN are due in, and Dublin City Comic Con is next weekend, assuming I get paid. Well, it’s next weekend even if I don’t get paid, but we won’t be going if I don’t. :) Anyway, so maybe I’ll see about doing as big a chunk of TRUTHSEEKER in December as possible. Because that always works, what with the holidays and all. :)

I think I actually *am* going to take the weekend off. Read a couple books, maybe make some icons. But not work. My brain is tired.

Random icon question: I want to do a set of mood icons. I’ve seen them in various sizes, ranging from V. Tiny (which I won’t be doing) to almost-100×100 size. Do people have any kind of actual preference for mood icon sizes?

- email *more* to FPI
- write Morrigan short story
- read & comment on other short story
- send photo to CI guy

ytd wordcount: 350,500
miles to Dunharrow: 6.8

currently: relieved

hlp i m pinnd don by cts on my rms. cnnot use lft hnd t ll or reech fr sde of keybord. ish someone ould tke picture of mmmlin ssistnce.

hlp, hlp (xclmtion point)

currently: giggly

Lucy’s much perkier today, and is scent-glanding things and popping her claws on the cat tree, and consequently I’m much happier. Zilli is *extremely* sullen over Lucy getting gooshyfood and him not. Actually, he’s sullen in general. He thinks we’re paying too much attention to Lucy. I told him we’d paid lots of attention to him last year when he broke his leg, and that Lucy hadn’t hissed at *him*, but he doesn’t seem to care. Anyway. Things are getting better.

We’re going up to Longford tomorrow to visit my parents for several days, so I don’t know that I’ll be around online much. I’m sure you’ll all miss me terribly, but be brave. Since I don’t really expect to post tomorrow, I shall pre-emptively say happy birthday to Janis, uriel, Morgan Freeman, Marilyn Monroe, Superman, Ardian’s son, and anybody else who happens to share the June 1 Gemini birthdate. :)

Oh. Maybe I will post tomorrow, because I decided I wanted to do a Project 365 this year. This is supposed to be a “make Catie do things other than write” project. But I guess I have to take a picture a day for that, not post a picture a day. Anyway. This is already longer than I thought it was going to be, so I’m going to go … away now.

miles to Minas Tirith: 461

currently: tired

Bloody hell, I’m tired. I’m sure it’s a combination of having stepped my exercise up from nothing* to Quite A Lot over the last two weeks, and simply sleeping less because it’s lighter out and so I wake up earlier. But damn, I’m *tired*. I may try giving myself a day off from exercise tomorrow, although that’s hard to do, because once I’ve got a goal in mind (current goal: walk 6 miles a day. average achieved goal over the last 2 weeks: 5.75 miles a day.) it’s very hard to shake the idea that it’s negotiable. That it is not, in fact, set in stone, but more of a moving target. This mindset, now that I think about it, may be why I don’t seem to be terribly good at having hobbies. I seem to think I need to put 100% into everything all the time. :)

Anyway. Knackered, was the point there. Left the house to do my writing today, because I was falling asleep at the keyboard, and got 5 or 6 pages written, plus what I think is a reasonably detailed outline for the remainder of the book. I’m now trying to convince myself I can stay awake to type in what I wrote today, and spend a bit more time finishing a scene and … yeah. I should do it today, because if I wait til tomorrow it’ll feel like a day’s work tomorrow and then I won’t get anything more done. And I’m so close to finished with the whole thing…

Last night was very nice. We trundled over to Sammy & Myles’s and visited with them and Kate, and everyone seems well. Well, for the value of “well” that involves 3 of the 5 adults present (and apparently at least one of the children, but the children were in bed, so not technically *present*) having colds and feeling a bit like death warmed over. :) But we had a good time! :)

Okay. If I go to work I can probably get quite a lot done by 5, and maybe if I go easy on the exercise tomorrow, I can take all my energy and throw it into finishing this book. *trundles off*

*suricattus would rightfully point out that in fact “nothing” was walking 2-3 miles a day and that perhaps I oughtn’t knock it.

miles to Minas Tirith: 386.8

currently: tired

Approximately half the known world, or at least half my known world, will be in New York this weekend for Comic Con, and I am *so* envious. Sadly, though, we didn’t win the lottery yesterday, so we’re not jet-setting off the the Big Apple. Maybe next year…

I guess I got up too early. I was exhausted before I did anything, and then the cats sat on me when I sat down to write, and they emitted sleep rays, and I succumbed. Ted got up before I’d entirely fallen asleep, and suggested I go to a cafe and write longhand, which idea I followed through on, because I clearly needed something to shake myself up a little, not to mention to keep myself awake. I got about five pages written, then met Ted for lunch and followed it up with glasses-shopping with Kate, then went to the library to try to work some more.

The library, it turns out, is not a good place for me to go to work. There are all of these *books* there, and even if I’m not especially inclined to read them right now, they’re not very well alphabetized. *twitch* *twitch* *twitch* I got another page and a very little done, and was horribly bored with the story, so slogged toward home, hoping the walk might shake an idea or two loose. It did, so I got another page done and know where to pick up tomorrow. I’ll probably type it tomorrow and see if I can’t just charge on from there.

ytd wordcount: 165,100
miles to Minas Tirith: 277.4

currently: tired

Several minutes ago there was a great crashing of glass. Ted, jerked from sleep, said, “God damn cat! God! Damn! Cat!” with unusual vehemence, and leapt out of bed. I followed, less annoyed but equally awake, and we searched the house, finding a slinking, guilty Zilli, but no broken glass, much less the broken crystal that I feared. We determined it must’ve been outside.

It turned out Ted’s vehemence was born from Lucy puking outside the bedroom door at 4am, an incident which I blissfully slept through. And now he, very sensibly, has gone back to bed, whereas I figure if I go back to bed I won’t get up for at least two hours and won’t start writing until 10am. So I guess I better just go ahead and go to work…

ytd wordcount: 86,200
miles to Minas Tirith: 170.5

currently: awake

I am utterly flipping knackered.

Most of the things on my thinks to do list today have been completed. The one that was bolded and written in terse sentence fractions, of course, is not.

I have answered about thirty emails, most of them saying something to the effect of, “Thank you for applying, but no,” which is a bit draining in and of itself (I cannot imagine doing that 8000 times a year, as arcaedia does).

…oh. *Dude*. I was sure I had to go 388 miles to get to Minas Tirith, and I was about to triumphantly, if wearily, proclaim that I’d made it! Except I made it several days ago, because it was only 380 miles! I’ve gone 8 miles toward somewhere else, and I don’t even know where yet! That means I have walked 2712 miles (well 2720, really) since April 2003. And I see from previous entries that I intend to walk the leg of 517 miles: Ride with Gandalf and Pippin from Isengard to Minas Tirith next, so I’m still on my way to Minas Tirith. Hm. Maybe I should do something else instead, just so I’m going somewhere else. Mmm, but, well, no, because if I do this then I’m done with the hobbits and can start following Aragorn around.

(I am talking about the Eowyn Challenge, for those who don’t know what I’m going on about. I’ve been walking all over Middle Earth for the last five years. Don’t know why, but it works for me as inspiration.)

I’m going to go be not at a computer now.

miles to Minas Tirith (again):: 8
ytd wordcount: 7100

currently: exhausted

I woke up at about 6:20 this morning. Blee. (Hi, Michael!) I wanted to be up by 7 so I could call Ted and Jenn, and my brain was apparently worried about oversleeping. I’d set the alarm. Foolish brain. So I lay around for a while, then got up and did call Ted at 7, and he didn’t loathe me for not calling last night. I’d just gotten in too late. He sounded pretty cheerful, so that’s good.

And I called Jenn, who was Very Awake; I didn’t even hear her hotel room phone ring before she picked up. :)

We had a good day yesterday. :) We went out for a proper Irish breakfast, and then I dragged her over to meet my family, including the little boys. Breic was fairly charming, and Seirid kept squeaking, but overall they were pretty cute. :) And we hung out for a while and talked, then trundled over to Dublinia, which is a history of Dublin museum next to Christchurch Cathedral, which we also went into. Dublinia was reasonably interesting, and the cathedral is properly imposing, as a cathedral ought to be. It was very pretty, though this morning it’s clear as a bell outside, and I bet the stained glass windows really glow when it’s nice out. :) However, the weather was predicted to be absolutely pissing miserable until Jenn left (really; that’s what the weather prediction said!), and then it was going to get quite nice. That appears to be true.

*laughs out loud* Jenn thought it was very funny I’d posted about Wednesday and that her friend Michael had read the posting and knew we’d been utterly unsuccessful in finding music for him. I mentioned it on our way out the hotel room door in the morning, which made her have to stop and go back and read my blog. *laugh* How geeky we are. Michael will be happy to hear that in the middle of the Dublinia tour, she suddenly turned to me and said, “I have a message to pass on to you,” and then, entirely out of the blue, said, “BLEE!” (I knew I’d been saying, “Blee,” a lot lately, because this has been a very blee-ful sort of month, but evidently I said it once quite a while ago and Michael picked up on it, but thought it might’ve been a one-time deal for me, as scouring the journal didn’t turn it up again. But then I started using it again recently and he was pleased about this. *laugh* I like people. *laugh*)

We wandered through Temple Bar trying to decide where to eat, stopping at The Clarence Hotel (Bono’s place) to look at the Tea Room menu, and decided that we kinda didn’t want to go somewhere quite that snooty, so we stopped at the tourist information place and asked them where we should eat dinner. They suggested a number of places, and we ended up at Elephant & Castle, of which we’d both heard, and which proved to be the best place I’ve eaten at in Temple Bar so far (I’ve only eaten at about four restaurants in there, but mostly they’ve been overpriced and only adequate as far as food goes, but this place was only *slightly* overpriced and the food was very good!) I ordered (among other things) their homemade ginger ale, which was really ginger soda, and once I got over the surprise of that, I liked it. Ted wouldn’t have. :) And we just had burgers for dinner, but Jenn ordered a Stilton cheeseburger, and it turned out to be a huge thick burger placed on a square of Stilton cheese that was over an inch thick and probably close to 3×3 inches square. It was absolutely *absurd*.

And we talked and talked and *talked*. About writing, about writers, about philosophies of life (which tied right into the writing and writers), interjecting it all with life stories and generally enjoying ourselves very much. One of the lovely things about European restaurants is they don’t rush you out of the place, so we spent over two hours at dinner, which was extremely pleasant.

Eventually we headed out, went back to Jenn’s hotel, asked where we might find a trad seisun, and were pointed down the street at the same pub we’d breakfasted at. It was not, in fact, a seisun, but a performer, which wasn’t exactly what we’d been hoping for. However, it proved to be a ridiculous amount of fun, in large part because there’s a massive rugby match this weekend and Dublin was littered with men in kilts last night. (I commented to Jenn while we were in Temple Bar that, “That looked cold!” and one of them turned and said, “It’s BLOODY cold!”) Anyway, 3 of the men in kilts came into Foley’s and the leader of the pack, who was extremely charismatic and having one hell of a good time, immediately joined in singing, and they were rolling their Rs and dancing around a bit, and the musician played a number of songs I knew (turns out Jenn and I know totally different trad music), so I was singing along and actually got complimented both by the singer and the three Scotsmen, which was charming and amusing. :) And the bar filled up and more people sang, and the Scotsmen continued to be funny, and we turned out to have a very fine time of it. :) Oh, and some poor bastard asked if the musician knew some song or other, and ended up up there singing it (not well at *all*, and he could only remember the first verse, and that not particularly well) himself while the musician got a beer. :) So yeah, lots of fun.

I walked Jenn back to her hotel, and she played me several songs from her must-hear list, and it was very late indeed when we parted ways! It was a great couple of days. :) :) :)

miles to Mou…wait, I did this last night. nevermind.

It’s almost midnight. I didn’t mean to stay up until almost midnight. I stayed up til like 12:30 last night. This is not a good trend. *sleepy eyes*

OTOH, it’s been a pretty cool day. I got a few hundred words written, then went out to the airport to meet The Best Agent Ever, who’s come to visit me for a day and a half. As the only picture I’d ever seen of her is the 100×100 pixel icon on her livejournal, there was pretty much no chance of me recognizing her. I knew she had dark hair and good cheekbones. I thought she was shorter than I was, then I thought, no, I only think that because almost everyone is shorter than I am, I’m making that up. So that left me with the dark hair and cheekbones, and I spent quite a lot of time watching all the women coming off the plane, trying to decide if that might be Jenn:

Too old, too young, too glittery, too old, too short (hair), too long (hair), too With Somebody, too shy, too this, too that, too many things. There was one woman I thought looked like a distinct possibility. She came out with a real spring in her step and made eye contact with people and pulled her luggage along industriously, a red coat hanging over the top of the suitcase, and I thought, “Huh, the hair’s not right, but the attitude is,” and she strode past me it was revealed that the red coat covered two thirds of a little boy who was lying on his face on the angled suitcase, with his little feet dragging along the floor.

Too en-childed. :) It made me laugh out loud, though. :)

We did in time meet up, Jenn having fortunately read the email which said I’d be wearing turquoise pants and a black leather jacket, and it turned out I was right: she was shorter than me, after all. :) We got ourselves onto the bus and to her hotel and went to lunch, or whatever you call a full meal at 3pm, and didn’t leave until after 5 ’cause we were just hanging out and talking and talking and talking. Lots of fun. :) Then we did LOTS of walking around trying to find some music stores that might carry some Irish music she was looking for for a friend, and *totally* failed, but that was okay; we figure it’s his fault for asking for hard-to-find CDs. :)

To bed, so tomorrow we can go off and do some touristy things. :)

miles to mount doom: 415
ytd wordcount: 77,300

I am sufficiently tired to feel floaty.

Yesterday we drove down to Cork (it was a *beautiful* day, and a wonderful drive) to give the letting agency money and to get the keys. Upon getting to Cork, Ted wasn’t 100% sure of where he was, so he stopped so we could look at the map. At a glance, we couldn’t find a map. I said, “Are you sure you brought it?” He was sure. We scoured the car. No map. I said, “Not to belabor the issue, but are you sure you brought it?”

Well, he said, he’d gone upstairs to get it and had come downstairs with it. It did not, however, appear to make it further than downstairs. We found a parking garage and went half looking for the street we needed, and more looking for food. The latter we knew we could find in the city centre (an lar in Irish), so we went there, crossing Parliment Bridge on the way. We got a map and food and over food Ted studied the map and couldn’t find the street we were on *on* the map, but was pretty sure we needed to be quite a ways over that way (to the southeast, essentially). So we went out to head that way.

Halfway back over Parliment Bridge, Ted stopped dead. There, directly in front of us, at the corner we had crossed the bridge from, two blocks south from where we’d eaten, and not east at all, was the place we were looking for. *laugh* We went in and did the paperwork and stuff, and all was well. Except Ted had eaten fish pie for lunch, and it turned out to have shellfish in it, and he’s developed an intolerance to shellfish, so his tummy was all hurty. :( Poor Ted.

But despite his hurty tummy he said we should go see the house in Cobh so I could see where we’d be living, so we drove out there, and Cobh is very, very pretty. It’s got hills like San Francisco and the most absurdly beautiful church. Our house seems to be in a nice subdivision (housing estate), and it’s probably a 2 mile walk to the train station and another mile into town. I’m hoping to find a shortcut. I can hardly imagine there’s not a shortcut, and yet at the same time I would be completely unsurprised if there isn’t one. And we live near the top of a massive hill, so my, walking into town will be good for my butt. :)

I’m looking forward to exploring the place and seeing it all. Ted says he saw an ad for a yoga class, and there’s an equestrian center somewhere on the island, so maybe I could take riding lessons. There’s a pool in town somewhere, and the people at the Curves in Athy gave me the address for the Curves in Cobh, and given that you can sort of walk into any random store in Athy and find an ad for somebody giving guitar lessons, I figure I can probably find something similar in Cobh. And Cork’s a 20 minute train ride (after a 40 minute walk, if I can’t find a shortcut!) away, and I am *sure* I could find dance classes and Irish lessons there if I can’t find ‘em in Cobh. And maybe there’s a photography club or a reading club or something I could join.

I’d be awfully surprised if I’m organized enough to do all those different things, but if I manage two or three of them, that’d be really good. Anyway, then we drove back and it snowed on us! Big fat snowflakes, though it wasn’t really sticking. When we got home we all walked down to the Italian place in Athy for a going-away dinner for Shaun…

…because he has decided that Europe is a place for him to visit, not to live. *sniffle* We’ve been living with Shaun the better part of a decade: we lived together in college from very late 1994 through mid-1996, and then he came to live with us in August 2000 when we were in California. So we’re very sad to lose him, but we hope he will be happy. :} We all got up this morning and went into Dublin so he could catch his plane, and now we have no Shaun anymore. :(

(He does, however, expect me to send him books when I get my advance author copies. *laugh*)

Ted and I went to “Last Holiday” (which was cute) since we were in town, then went to visit Mom & Dad and didn’t manage to see D&G and the little boys, which we hoped we’d arrange before this exodus to Cork happens. Deirdre says they’ll just have to come visit us in Cobh. :)

The house down there really is nice. The second bedroom is GINORMOUS, and we’re going to split it, half computer room and half guest room. I’m going to use the littlest bedroom, which is only large enough for a single bed, as my *office*. I cain’t hardly imagine having an *office*! That’ll be cool.

…in decidedly less cool news, it looks like my grandma, who has been fading for some time, is really going about the business of dying now. She is comfortable, she is content, she is ready, and I am very sad. We all may be going to a memorial service very soon.

I think I’ll go cuddle with my husband and watch a not-emotionally-taxing movie and go to bed early, for it is very, very tired around here.

BTW, thanks to everybody who responded to my last post about comics. I’m going to talk about that stuff some more, but not right now.

ytd wordcount: 74,200
miles to mount doom: 410