I have to say, I'm making wonderful progress on Tangled Web, which is my latest writing project. Long novella, short novel... not quite sure how to classify it. K.T. suggests that I package it with Willow Bough and put them together in a sort of "Tales of" collection.

For all your sex and violence needs, I suppose. I really need for my next project to not heap quite so much psychological trauma on my protagonists. Maybe I'll try my hand at a romance.

Anyway, Karen's been giving me feedback and spurring me onward, which is nice. And I can see the end from here. I've got three chapters and two interlude bits to go. As on-again, off-again as my writing is (and the fact that I do it at work, when I am subject to higher-priority tasks), I don't want to predict it'll end soon, but I think certainly by the end of the summer.

(You hear that? That was Karen's eyes ponking out of her head in horror at the idea that she might have to wait that long.)

I'm so dumb. Matt and I usually split our tax return into an assortment of pieces -- most of it goes into savings, a largish chunk goes into Penny's college account, and then we each get a bit for what we call "mad money," to spend on whatever we want.

Now, I can always spend money, but I kind of like to make a single purchase with my mad money, to prevent it getting frittered away and lost into the ether. I'm just weird like that. But I had no idea what I wanted to buy this year.

(Mind you, we haven't gotten our return back yet, and we haven't decided exactly how much mad money we're getting, but I do like to ponder these things in advance.)

I've got most of the scrapbooking supplies I want. If I make a large Pampered Chef order, it'll come out of household funds, because I'll be replacing our ruined skillet. I've thought about buying a newershiniersexier iPod, but my old one really does everything I want it to do, and it still works just fine.

And then, yesterday, I finally remembered: DUH. I'm going to Cancun in three months. I've already dropped quite a bit on my passport and air fare, and I'm not counting what I spent on clothes, because I needed a new bathing suit anyway. Even though I don't have to pay for a hotel, I still have to eat, and I haven't paid for any tours or activities, and I'll still want to buy souveniers and presents.

So, yeah. Duh. Mad money = vacation budget offset. Case closed.

My boss is back from his business travel today, so no more irc for me, except at lunchtime. I guess the bright side is that it gives me an incentive to remember to take my walk. (Or at least, removes a distraction that was luring me to NOT take it.)

Email's always welcome, though. Or text messages. I hate feeling like I'm out of touch.

I did two more pages of my college album last night, and then took inventory of my pictures. I've got pictures of us studying (and "studying") that'll probably make a two-page spread, and then I've got some pictures from graduation -- and that'll be the end of my William and Mary pictures!

I expect I'll be putting my pictures from my VA Tech years into the same album, and just changing the color scheme to Tech's colors. Even though 85% of my pictures from those years were taken when I was back here in Williamsburg to visit, and another 10% were taken at Radford when I was visiting John. Oh, well, that's the way they go.

I started picking out my favorite March and April pictures for the annual family album (this is the first year for it, but a tradition has to start somewhere, right?) and when I flipped to the folder where I was stashing them, I had... 96 pictures. Erm. A bit too many.

I weeded, and was ruthless, and got it down to... 78. Sigh. More weeding, more ruthlessness... Okay, maybe I didn't really need five pictures of Penny eating ice cream and being funny about it, even if they were all at different occasions. I agonized and got her easter-egg-hunt pictures down to only four.

Do I really need six pictures of Penny playing dress-up? ...Yes. Yes, I do. If I wind up not using them, I'll send them to assorted grandparents, but I think there's a good chance that I'll use them.

But eventually, I got it down to fifty-five. And I simply could not countenance removing another picture.

This is more than twice the number of pictures I used for January and February. But then, there were more events in March and April.

Ah, well. My scrapbook, I can do whatever I want, right?

(Wow. Could this have possibly been a longer, more boring entry? Sorry. All my actual creativity is going into Tangled Web.)

--Liz