Sale!

I was just going to post in a grouchy manner about how I'd had literally no e-mails at all for, ooh, twelve hours, and where the hell was everybody? - when my inbox clattered with another acceptance, of a story I wrote at the tail-end of last year.

Again I must be discreet, until I have permission to post; but I shall naughtily quote from the letter, just so's you know why I'm strutting about the house in such a peacock-arrogant manner:

"My God you write well. The way the insights balance each other out. I
liked the whole idea of the township, and the authority of the science and
the language. Just the kind of story I was hoping for, so for me it's a
great big definite yes."

"Authority", see that? *smugs*

It's some consolation for my poor showing in yesterday's rewrite; I'd been hoping for a hundred pages, and managed less than half that. To be sure, the book is getting better; but so slooooowly...

I'd been hoping to send it away at the end of this week, but that won't be possible now. I don't believe I'm usually this slow at this stage; I had been thinking to blame the laptop, or at least my needing to use it full-time (for lo, the desktop is still not back; for lo, they have still not obtained the Dell part they need. Remind me never to use Dell again?), but then I remembered that the only decent stretches of work I'm putting in are in the Lit & Phil, where it's just me and the laptop. So, not that, then. Distractability, thy name is Chaz.

And today and tomorrow I cannot go there, because I must clean house. *is distracted*

In which Chaz lays a trap, and Mac fails to fall for it

I am trying to sort things out a little in the office here, in breaks from the Department of Correction. This mostly involves shifting boxes about. In some cases, it involves emptying boxes, even putting boxes out in the alley for neighbours to seize and use at will. (Removing boxes from the house, of course, is a dance: remove cat, pick up box. Return for next box. Remove cat, pick up box...)

Mostly, though, it is just moving boxes from here to there, in vague hopes that they may become invisible. Every shifted box requires a cat to sit on it, helpfully; likewise, every cleared space requires a cat to occupy it. I have been tripping over cats all day.

So I picked up a box, rested it on the comfy chair while I peered inside: computer games! That I have not played for a decade! (I am not really a games player any more, tho' I was when young; and computer-wise I really only ever played Civ.) While I was trying to decide what to do with them - throw them out? leave them in the alley for neighbours? deliver them to a charity shop? - Mac jumped onto the box. I removed him, and carried the box to the Plateau of Procrastination: that's the half-landing one flight down, where I can dump stuff while I think about it. Mac followed, and as soon as I put the box down, he jumped on top of it and curled up.

Yay, I thought, two birds with one stone: the box is out of the office, and so is the cat! He thinks he's helping! Excellent!

Back upstairs I went. Picked up another box, rested it on the comfy chair...

Thunk! is the sound of Mac landing on a box-lid, before I can even lift it up.

Further to my last...

Barry has discovered that one of the boxes - on top of a high bookshelf - has packing-peanuts in it. He is sitting up there fishing them out one by one,and dropping them to the floor. Where Mac is pouncing on them. At least they're amusing each other, though--

Yup. Barry has now caused the box to fall, with himself atop it. Lots of other stuff got knocked down too, and Mac nearly got squashed, and there has been shouting. I may have contributed. I am trying to get stuff picked up, for fuck's sake...

Still working, after all these hours

I have another six pages to check, before the end of Part Two.

Six pages? It's nothing. But it's another half an hour's work, at current rates of progress; and I am tired already.

But! I can has cheeze! My blessed mother sent me a small hamper of Cornish cheeses in celebration of L. And I have - of course - wine. And the two are supposed to go together. Like Cornish and chuff, basically. (A birdie byword: the Cornish chough was supposedly so rare as to have disappeared almost altogether from the county when I was living there. But when foot-and-mouth closed the coastal footpath for a few months, suddenly there it was again. What I say is, it can't have gone very far...)(Also, the Cornish chough is otherwise known as the beckit, and occurs proper on the coat of arms of Thomas á Becket. How cool is that?)