3 December 2002

Oops. I left my disk at home this morning. It's not that big a deal - I'll just write my journal entry and whatever else I feel like writing in regular text, and then mail it home to myself. I'll do the administrative stuff there.

(But damn, I'll be glad when this "restriction" I'm on is over and I can start posting from here again.)

Gah. Time for the winter dryness to hit. My legs and arms itch, my face feels tight, and I wake up in the mornings parched. Any day now, I'll start carrying around a constant static charge so that I shock myself every time I touch anything metal.

I'd suggest getting a humidifier, except that I'm not really sure it would help. And I can just see Matt's reaction. "We live in the middle of a swamp! In one of the most humid places in the country! And you want a what?"

Well, we'll see how bad it gets this year. I can cope with the itching and dryness as long as I have some lotion handy, but the static thing is painful and it drives me nuts.

I made some good progress on my brother's website yesterday. If I hadn't forgotten my disks this morning, I would be doing some more work on it today, but I'm mostly waiting for John to take a look at what I've done and give me feedback.

I think it looks good, actually. Content without clutter. Nice colors. The only graphics are John's pictures. I want to re-arrange the pictures in reverse order of creation, and we need to add a bio/contact page. And he wants two of his pieces to be displayed rotating, which means I've got to remember how to use Flash.

But all in all, I'm pretty pleased with it.

I'm also trying to organize my notes for the next book. I was kind of hoping to put together an outline before we started writing this time, but it looks like it's not going to happen. The characters keep talking to me, trying to tell me their stories, telling me the events of their lives that put them into the situations where we find them.

I like that talk. It's how I do most of my writing.

But at the same time, it makes working on outlines a little difficult.

I guess it's a day for random thoughts.

Here's another: I haven't been warm in my office for the last two weeks. I keep thinking about getting a space heater that would fit under my desk and at least keep my feet warm. It wouldn't help at all on the dry skin front, but I can always get more lotion.

Of course, I also keep thinking about getting a small heater for the bathroom. It's not so bad after the steam has warmed things up, but first thing in the morning... brr!

And that thought reminds me that I need to schedule an inspection of our heating system. Some people down the road from us just had some major and potentially dangerous problems with theirs due to shoddy construction - I'd like to see ours fixed, if necessary, before the pipes burst and punch holes in the walls. (For that matter, the light on the thermostat that means the heater is in overdrive has been on, consistently, for weeks. It's not supposed to be on all the time. I'm dreading our next electric bill.)

--Liz