I have reservations

Continuing on the Doctor Who theme of recent messages, I watched the end of The Awakening yesterday (not bad, another two-parter) and went straight into Frontios, which started out fairly well but then became pretty ludicrous toward the end. I liked the bit with Turlough fending people off with a hat rack (What did I do? he gasps when someone appears to die from his actions) but the whole sub-plot about historical memory was simply silly. Though I have to admit that the actor who plays Turlough does a fairly decent 1000-mile stare. Good, too, to see the Doctor resorting to glasses for close-up work, something that is increasingly becoming part of my life.

I finally got our plans finalized for a vacation in New York this summer. The travel part was simple, flexible and cheap. Getting a hotel room was another matter. There’s no shortage of places to stay and the range per night is something between $62 (honest, I did see that on one search!) and $6000 (mild, but only mild, exaggeration). Since there are three of us, that complicated matters a little. Some of the best-known hotels don’t actually have terribly good reputations among people who’ve stayed with them, for various reasons. I spent a lot of time reading customer reviews, trying to read between the lines to separate unmet expectations from genuine issues. I finally found a place suits all of our needs and doesn’t cost more per night than our monthly mortgage. I’m glad that’s over.

I’ve been working on a new short story for a while, and I think I have a handle on it. I wrote over 1000 words this morning and am now better than halfway to the end. It’s going to need serious work on revision, but I think I’m turning the corner with it. I came up with a couple of narrative twists to ramp up the suspense a little and to keep it from being too predictable, and I know a lot about the character history that I haven’t yet found a way to thread into the tale, but that will be for the rewrite.