All Eyes on Me

I have been a bad blogger, not writing a single entry over my Thanksgiving break. But the break was so pleasantly low-key and relaxing I just didn't have the drive to do it. After the insanely busy three previous weeks I've had, doing nothing but hanging with my parents, cooking, eating, sleeping, and playing with the dog was all I wanted to do. It was very restful, though, so I hope I can proceed more energetically and productively from here. Merlin is a lovely dog, very gentle and sweet. He was a bit nervous when we first arrived, clutching his little armadillo baby and pacing around, but he calmed down quickly and became our friend. It was very good to have a dog around the house again.

Home, and the ritual of Thanksgiving, is much the same as it ever was-- there was something very comforting about the holiday being the exact same kind of nice as I remember it --except that my dad's beer brewing hobby has taken over large chunks of the space. The basement, which is finished and like another room of the house, was filled with huge cookpots and bags of grain and complicated rig used for boiling the water and transferring it from pot to pot. Werts in glass carboys sat in various locations around the house in plastic tubs with labels on them, covered by cardboard boxes to keep out the light. Dad has something like thirty gallons of beer going, and is really excited to talk about and show people what he's done.

As much as I enjoyed hanging around with the family, there were a number of things I meant to get done, and I didn't work on any of them. The first priority is getting the characters I owe for tonight's Resonance meeting written up. I've got two of my required three finished, but I'm not sure what to do about the last one. I also need to get cracking on The Stand. I got a few casting questionnaires back already, which pleases me immensely, and I hope that now that the holiday is over people will have time for them. But the upshot is I have a lot of writing to do, and I'm slightly annoyed with myself that I didn't use my time off more efficiently. Ah, well, nothing to do from here but go forward, and buckle down. 

I found out today that my mother woke up to a wet nose snuffling against hers. :-) That Merlin generates the most interesting news!

Today turned out to be significantly busier than I expected it to be, but overall was quite pleasant. This summer, since nennivian and aurora_knight will not be moving in yet, we will have a couple of subletters, once of which is the lovely blendedchaitea. She will be going home to Los Angeles for two weeks before she officially comes to stay with us, so today I helped her gather up her dorm room, pack it into our respective cars, and store in against the wall downstairs until she needs it again. It turned out all that carrying was one hell of a workout; I must have walked miles with my arms loaded with heavy stuff. My muscles feel pretty ripped up, but it's actually a pretty good feeling, since it's been so long since I got a real workout.

In regards to my personal housing-related interests and responsibilities, I got one out of the two communications I was hoping for today. I was told that bronzite's furniture is supposed to be delivered between 8AM and 12PM tomorrow. I'm glad to know, but that's a bit earlier than I was hoping; it's earlier than I get up for work. Ah, well, God knows with how I've been sleeping I'll be up by that time anyway. As to the other communication, I didn't get the e-mail I was hoping for saying I can pick up the table. I'm hoping it will come tomorrow in time for me to make the trip to get it.

My parents just got a new dog!

After our old dog Carmen passed away at age fourteen, my mom has really missed having a dog around the house, and she finally determined she was going to get another one. She decided she didn't want a puppy with all the accompanying puppy behaviors, so she thought it might be nice to find a rescue dog, who would be slightly older and in need of a good home. We'd had wonderful experiences with Brittanys because of Carmen, so she thought they might get a similar type of dog. So she contacted the Mid-Atlantic English Springer Spaniel Rescue Service and they connected her and my dad with a sweet, energetic six-or-seven-year-old boy that they just brought home yesterday. They went to meet him yesterday, saying they would get to know him a bit and decide if he was the right dog for them, and it turned out that they loved him, so he is now our newest animal family member. They didn't know what his real name was at the rescue and had given him some placeholder name, so Mom decided to call him Merlin. She always wanted a dog named Merlin. :-)
 

( Picture of Merlin behind the cut. )