Making good headway on the work in progress. I see I have roughly 80 days before my deadline. That’s ok. I wrote all of The Stephen King Illustrated Companion in half that time so I should be in good shape.
Back up to nearly 70° today, but down to below freezing tomorrow night, perhaps even into the low twenties. Water restrictions are starting to be lifted in some quarters.
Oh, AbFab. All these years later and your still just as silly and nonsensical as ever. The characters have hardly changed one iota. The best bit in “The Identity,” in my opinion, was the crossover with the Danish version of The Killing. Sofie Gråbøl makes an appearance in character as Sarah Lund, wearing trademark banded sweater. Eddie talks to her in mock-Danish, which leads to an Abbott & Costello exchange between them.
The second episode of the new series of Sherlock (a riff on The Hound of the Baskervilles) didn’t quite live up to the promise of the first. I found the same to be true of the first series: the middle episode was weak there, too. This one was more like a rejected script from Fringe. There’s a difference between modernizing something and going that one step farther and turning it into complete rubbish. There were some nice bits, and it was mostly entertaining, but not as good as last week.
I watched a section of the original Andromeda Strain the other night, too. Talk about a slow burner. It did an excellent job of depicting how science is really done (as opposed to what happens on modern forensics shows), but it also showed just how tedious doing science can be, too. And I say that as a scientist.
That’s my Christmas gift over there, a recliner. The fact that it reclines is the least important aspect. See the way the back is recessed? The lower ridge supports my lower back, which has been causing me problems for a couple of years. When we watched movies, I spent a lot of time wriggling around to find a new comfortable position because the sofa didn’t have good back support. I tested this one out at the show room and it was perfect. We watched a movie on Saturday night and I didn’t budge the entire time. Simple pleasures.
Devoted my attention to a single writing project this morning and got a substantial amount of work done. I’m pleased.
The decorations came down and were packed away a lot faster than they went up. Less than two hours from beginning to end.
This’ll probably be my last blog entry of 2011. The time when people might traditionally be expected to write about resolutions. Not me. I don’t make them. Never have. I’m not exactly an introspective person. Sure, I meet deadlines and I schedule and plan things and stuff like that, but I don’t do resolutions. One day at a time, for the most part. I have to turn in a manuscript on April 1 and I will meet that goal, but I don’t resolve to do it. I’ll simply do it! I also have a 25,000-word novella to write in the first quarter of the year and I plan to do that, too. Again, not resolutions—simply plans.
Back to the real world again after a 4-day weekend. The week between December 19th and yesterday was the rainiest we’ve seen in eighteen months. We went out to the family service on Christmas Eve in a drizzle and it poured rain the rest of the evening. If it had been snow, it would have been a blizzard. We, of course, badly need the rain, but snow wouldn’t have been unwelcome (though my wife disagrees with that sentiment).
I have today off from the day job. In addition to my usual writing duties, I’m doing some domestic chores: I prepared a batch of dough for the breadmaker and I’m making chicken soup from the carcass (love that word–it’s in the recipe!) of a chicken. The smell of things cooking–how much more festive can it get?
Currently reading 
My new essay went up on Storytellers Unplugged over the weekend. It’s called 