Four inches of snow on the ground this morning - perfect day for staying in. Too bad I had a meeting with a client and then the writing group. It's chilly when you forget your scarf.

Books: Well... three more paragraphs done.

Have I mentioned here that Clarion West has decided I'm not among the lucky winners? Well, now I have. I'm getting quite adept at handling the rejection letters. I can rationally see all kinds of reasons for not liking my submission as well as someone else's. I've got a very healthy critic sharing space here in my brain. I don't always know when to listen to her, though. Sometimes she's right, sometimes she's wrong. The only way to know is to do a reality-check with the outside world. In this case, evidently, she was more right than the optimist.

So instead of paying someone to be critical of my work for six weeks I'm going to be paid to write another usermanual. The trade-offs in life aren't all bad.

Books: Not enough hours in the day! Not enough hours in the day tomorrow, either. And that's when the writing group is scheduled to meet. I wanted to give them a completed chapter, but I've only got the bare introduction at this point. Gah.

So when I was young I took piano lessons. (I have a good mother.) In high school I gave it up for homework, and didn't have the opportunity to practice in college. After that, I didn't have a piano.

I have one again! And I'm learning a few new things. For instance, the reach from G to D in the left hand isn't as far as I thought it was. I guess my hands are bigger now? Surely the keys aren't smaller. Also, when I was young we had a wind-up metronome, the old-fashioned kind with the key on the back. Now I have an electronic one (it came with the piano) and what I thought was the swift winding down of the old metronome turns out to be my own wacky sense of timing. I can go along steadily for a while, but then I want it to speed up - I feel like the same gap of silence lasts longer than it should. Weird.

And finally, I've learned that my piano teachers were right. What chagrine I feel! One of my teachers angrily marked out any fingering notes (the little numbers beneath the musical notes in some places) because I would _always_ stumble at them. My fingering instincts are odd, I guess. Also, I cheated for a while when I was a little kid and didn't read notes, just fingering numbers. I find now that I have to go along and mark out any fingering numbers because they mess me up - even if they're the fingering method I prefer.

That same teacher would snap at me if I glanced down at the keyboard because, she said, I always messed up when I tried to look at the keys instead of the music. I didn't believe her. But here I am today, looking down at the keys to do a difficult part and messing up on it - when I do just fine if I keep looking at the music.

I'm sorry, Ms. Clark, for all the mean things I thought about you and what you were telling me. You knew I'd learn you were right someday.

Books: Maybe tonight I'll finish that chapter....

I haven't actually been playing solitaire all this time. Today was my mother's birthday. Yesterday was the party. And over the last few days my health has been taking a hit. The acupuncturist says it's stress. All I know is that my back hurts.

So I got to thinking - I'm now the age my mother was when she had me. I'm her third child. Somehow when you're a kid you think your life is basically going to go the way your parents' did. Or at least, that's what I thought. Boy has that not been the case for me. It's a little weird to think that I'm starting to be an age where I'm going to start having my own actual memories of what she was like at this age. Maybe I'm not saying that very well. Blame the pain.

I'm not allowed to have anti-inflamatories anymore (according to my regular MD) because I've been taking them too long. My body is starting to have negative reactions to the drugs - rashes, hair falling out. Wee. So I had an extra acupuncture appointment on Saturday to help deal with the pain I shouldn't knock out with drugs. She says my chi isn't moving enough. Apparently poking holes in me with tiny needles helps that out.

I thought I was going to get a lot done today, but somehow it just didn't work out that way. Tomorrow is destined to be hectic so I should go to bed, but I feel like throwing one of those two-year-old tantrums. I don't _want_ to go to bed and you can't _make_ me. Except it's myself I'm yelling at.

I just feel like there should have been more to do the day, so it can't be over already!

Okay, I think I have my zoo habit under control now - but my ipod has become a portable solitaire machine. The trick is to keep it from taking over my life (and to avoid getting paranoid about it - I don't really think the sevens have it in for me). I have, however, already discovered two problems with the programming:

1) No satisfying woosh as you finally get all your cards face-up. Many solitaire programs provide more payoff than just "We have a winner!" by giving the player the satisfaction of seeing the cards all put themselves away, stacked up neatly on the aces. That's a great feeling, and the ipod version doesn't do it for you. You have to do all the final heavy-lifting yourself, tediously moving all the face-up cards to their spots on the aces.

It does, however, reshuffle/deal very very fast which is greatly appreciated by those of us who give up in a fit of pique if we get stuck.

2) An actual programming bug, not just a user-interface complaint. If you end up with - say, a 3 of hearts stacked face-up on top of a face-down 4 of spades you can tell without actually turning the face-down card over. When you "pick up" a face-up card you can only move the cursor to the cards which "fit" the card you just picked up. In order to say never-mind and put the face-up card back down again, you have to click on that face-up card, not on the place it was to begin with. But if the place it started is actually a viable play (if only the card were face-up) then the cursor shows that as a viable play. Does that make sense? Probably not. Now you know why I'm not getting paid to do QA for games. I can find the problems, but communicating them can be a problem sometimes.

The ski hills closed for the season two weeks ago. Today we had 14 inches of snow, with six more inches predicted tonight and another three tomorrow during the day. Please note - I have no complaints about the snow (I also don't have to shovel any sidewalks) it's the ski hills I'm miffed at. Don't they have fortune tellers for this sort of thing?

Books: Again, having trouble focussing.

I spent the afternoon working on a new venture. Some friends and I are looking at starting up a formal ballet school. It's a niche in this town that is currently under-served, and something I've been interested in since I was a kid. It's interesting how opportunities come along when you need them. This might/will turn into some regular income for me, and shouldn't preclude me becoming a novelist. Of course, there are still a lot of details to work out. But that's what's new with me.

Also, little nephew Lucas came home from the hospital today. We're all thrilled.

The nephew is doing well. He's off oxygen and eating better. If the trend continues, he'll be able to come home tomorrow afternoon. Yay!

Books: Yeah, didn't get much done today. Unless you count my finished zoo featuring rainforest animals.

Books: Chapter 4 finished! On to chapter 5. I haven't decided exactly what to bring to the writing group tomorrow. They've already read the beginning of chapter 4 and the end is just three pages more. We'll see what I can get done tomorrow. I've been having too much fun with Zoo Tycoon to be ultra-productive.

I had a pretty good day today. Didn't get everything on my list done, but I think I got the important ones out of the way. Paid my state income tax and my accountant. Made cookies. Dropped some of them off with friends. Ran an errand for my dad. Made dinner. Got my time in on the treadmill. I even got a shower today. How's that for functional? Of course, if I hadn't slept so long I wouldn't have had to spend my free time doing work. But there will always be room for improvement. And as they say - tomorrow is another day.

Books: One meeting with a client in the afternoon, then the rest of the day I should be able to spend finishing up this chapter. I need some really good dialogue. But this is just the first draft. I can always go back in the next pass and make them sound cooler. I just need to get the points across. So - first I need a list of what needs to be talked about to move the story along. Then I need to put them in some sensical order. Then get my characters in the same room together and have them discuss. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? Now, if everyone will just cooperate....

So I'm watching the latest commercial for OnStar - you know, the one that uses kids to guilt you into buying a car with this indispensible safety feature. "Would you put my little brother in a car without his car seat?" Anyway, at the end they helpfully flash the logos of all the brands that come with OnStar. One of which is Hummer. This totally cracks me up. Why? Well, it's like this... one of the features that OnStar doesn't like to mention is that they can evesdrop on whatever conversation happens to be going on in your car equipped with this safety feature. Also, they share this ability with law enforcement.

So the cute little kids are trying to guilt you into putting a bug in your car. How big-brother is that? And how funny is it that they're targeting the most expensive monstrosities on the road? I guess they know where to go to get the really juicy gossip.

Baby pictures (of my new nephew) now available on my Pictures page. Turns out he has pneumonia, so he'll be in the hospital for at least another week. We're all a little worried, but he'll probably be fine.

I have a new nephew!

For those of you counting, that makes seven nephews and three nieces.
He was born this evening - 6 lbs 1oz and 19.75 inches long.

He needs a little help with the oxygen, but he should be over that tomorrow. His mother is doing fine. His younger sister, who was announcing that she wanted nothing to do with the baby if it turned out to be a brother, has come around and decided it's okay to have another brother instead of a sister. She's pretty much in love with him.

We're all glad he arrived safely.

Books: I'm kind of stuck on dialogue. Must give that some thought.

Here it is April and at last I've put up pictures from my Florida trip - and finally put up the pictures of my neihborhood in Chicago so you can contrast that with the neighborhood I live in now.

I like the feeling of getting caught up on things.

Books: Took my latest work on that novel to my writing group. Favorite quotes: "Much better" and "Yeah, even I can follow what's happening now."