Hiatus

It's been an awfully long time since I last posted, I know. And I'm sure all of you out there have just been holding your breath, waiting--hoping--that I'd post again soon. Well, here you go. Merry Christmas. :-)

So, what's been happening here in Maine, you ask? For a while there, it seemed like we were just going to get snowstorm after snowstorm, with no end in sight. I had about two feet on my roof. Then, for Christmas, we got weather in the fifties. Go figure. Still have snow, but a lot of it's melted and reformed into ice. Super.

Temperatures are chilly, with chillier on the way. Everyone tells me to "just wait until February," so I guess that's when it will all improve and things will be balmy again. :-) Oh--and by the way. By "chilly," I mean sub-zero. So any of you out there who are complaining about cold, you can only complain if you're in the sub-zero club. Period.

Christmas was a success. My son was absolutely wild in anticipation for Santa Claus, which was worth it all right there. We watched some of the old Christmas specials (Rudolph, Frosty, Santa Claus is Coming to Town) to prepare, and he kept going to the window to look out and see if he could see Santa. What a blast. Sunday we were invited to the Bishop's family Christmas party, and Christmas Day we were invited to the Stake Patriarch's. We just can't help feeling that people are being super nice to us just because we're new, and it's all going to be revealed as a facade any day now . . . but as time goes by, it appears more and more like it's not a facade at all. Everyone should live in Maine. (Except I'm glad they don't.)

Friday we'll be heading down to Pennsylvania for ten days. I might actually have to use a day of vacation this time, too. Oh well--you'd figure that in 20 days' worth of time off, I'd have to use some vacation sooner or later.

Family is good. Baby's still on track for beginning of February. Name not yet announced, but gender definitely female. We're excited, and preparing to bunker down for a newborn and those February temperatures we've been promised. We're flying in reinforcements: my mother-in-law is coming for two months. She arrives January 14th.

Writing's going . . . slowly. People are reading Ichabod some more for me, and I hope to have that out to an agent by the end of January. Planning for book . . . ten? Yes, number ten, is coming along. It had originally been planned as a YA, but I'm beginning to eye making it more of an adult book. There are some conflicts I'm looking at that are seeming beyond YA scope. Not sure yet, though. I'm trying some new plotting techniques, and I want to make sure to have it planned right before I dive into it. No eight month rewrites again, thank you very much.

Anything else to report? I suppose not. Happy Holidays to all of you, and may your New Year be bright and shiny.

Snow

Last night the weather people said we would get 1-2 inches of snow here. We got eight. Sometimes I wonder . . . if weather people can't get it right for the same evening, how is it that all the global warming stuff is ironclad for the next century? Not that I'm saying they're wrong or anything. I'm not a scientist. But still . . .

Computer's fixed. (Cost: free. I love being able to do it myself.)

Washing machine's fixed. (Cost: $90 for a plumber to come out and use a hair dryer to thaw the pipe down there. Next time, I'm doing that myself first. Live and learn.)

Going to the dentist today to get planing and root scaling done. And I have to pay to do this? At least insurance is covering 80%.

This all leads me to a conclusion. From now on, people should only have to pay for things that are pleasant and enjoyable. Fun, or your money back. My bank account would rejoice.

Frustration

For every good day, there's a bad. That just seems to be the way things are for me right now. Today was a bad day. It wasn't bad in a horrific way or anything. Just in a everything-I-thought-I-had-fixed-broke way.

The hot water works in the house. Everywhere but for the laundry machine. So no clean clothes until the plumber comes Wednesday.

My computer was working fine. Then I tried to beta test Mythos, and it totally freaked out. Three hours later, I'm still working on fixing it.

The car we bought? Working fine. But Maine has this thing they call an excise tax that you have to pay on cars. Maybe they have this all over the place. I don't know. All I know is that when I had my old '96 Pontiac, I didn't have to pay this much. $100 vs. $500? That's a big unexpected difference. Not good.

So it hasn't been a great day. But still, some good things have happened. Tomas wrote his letter to Santa Claus today. He wants two sleds (because he has a Mom and Dad, he says), a wooden Santa toy like the one I have, a snowman and a toy tricycle (not a real one--one that he can pretend to have his toys ride on). So there you have it. Very cute.

Also, my good friend Brandon Sanderson was allowed to officially announce the fact that he'll be writing the twelfth and final book of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. This is huge news for Brandon, and I'm very excited for him. If you don't know who he is, head over to his website to check him out. www.mistborn.com. He's on LiveJournal, too. Username mistborn. I'd link it, but I'm on a Mac running Safari (see comment above re: Computer Broken), and linking isn't working for me right now.

Good News

Yesterday was a red letter day for us. The hot water pressure in the shower and bathtub was actually fixed! It took 4 months and a couple of plumbers, furnace technicians, the former owner and the realtor to get it all done, but that just shows what a little teamwork can do. We are very happy.

And Vista's on my computer now, for better or worse. Of course, transferring files from XP to Vista proved to be rather troublesome, but I guess that just goes with the territory. Now if I could just get this javascript code to work for me on the website I'm designing at work . . .

Computer Building

The actual build was much easier than I thought it would be. It was the installation of software that has proven troublesome. I decided to go with Vista--for a variety of reasons. Yes, I've heard the arguments before, and no, I don't really want to hear them again. Anyway, it just hasn't worked on my machine at all. There's a conflict between the SATA hard drive and the motherboard and Vista. And before you point the finger at Vista, the same problem happened when I tried XP. Then again, I managed to fix the problem in XP--still working on the Vista fix. It's taken me about 15 hours so far, but the actual build was over in 5 or so. Not bad for a first timer, and I continue to be learning things about the process. Overall, I'm very glad that I chose to build instead of buy pre-assembled. I'm supposed to be a Techie--this is a rite of passage.

And when I'm done with it, I can write again. Sigh.