Snowfall

I haven't posted for three weeks.

Patrick and I went east to visit relatives -- not for three weeks, for less than a week. We can both job search on the Internet, and apply for jobs by email. But we didn't want to gone for any period, in case we got a call for an interview.

The temp at my brother's place -- in Upper New York State -- was around freezing. There was fog, snow and rain. Not good traveling weather, so our plan to putter around New England went by the side. However, we did manage one trip to visit cousins who live two hours from my brother's place. And we got to spend time in the wonderful old farmhouse my brother and sister-in-law have been renovating for 20 years and more.

There are six inside cats, plus a feral stray who is being fed and housed in a dog house outside. The stray stays close to the house and often stands at the kitchen door crying, as if he wants to come in. But he is terrified of people. It's classic approach-avoidance, the way lab rats behave, after you do terrible things to them.

Jon and Sia had to catch him in a live trap to get him to the vet.

Anyway, Pat and I spent a lot of time inside by the fire with the six inside cats and my brother's large collection of mysteries and books on politics and economics, plus the complete works of Shakespeare and Dickens.

I read the mysteries.

We came back and found snow and rain and fog here. But today there is snow, and it's cold enough for the snow to stay.

I have to finish proofreading my second project, a short novel, by the end of this week.

Happy New Year

I spent most of my free time in December working on the two books due to come out next year. One project is pretty much complete, though I keep having second thoughts about it -- not the fiction, but the essay and the interview. I really prefer to speak behind the mask of fiction, rather than directly with my own face visible.

Patrick says the essay and interview are both good. Maybe I should trust his opinion.

Now I have to go back to the other book and give that manuscript a final look.

Otherwise, I keep looking for work and finding nothing. I really would like a part time job, for the money it would bring in.

We had a nice, quiet Christmas and did nothing on New Year's Eve. New Year's Day is bright and cold, four degrees at the moment. There's a decent amount of snow on the ground. I am making tea and thinking about writing or maybe cleaning house.

The blogs I read are in agreement that the noughts were not a good decade -- a kidney stone of a decade, as Doonesbury said about the 70s, a decade I rather liked. So, good riddance to them. May the teens be better.