I'm back home. I didn't get a chance to do an entry on Friday before X and I flew off to Cleveland to visit a college friend of hers. Also, to attend the soup party. You see, X has said it's worth a trip to Cleveland for the soup. And her friend, Kat, does make great soup. But then she and Eric (that's her husband) had a new baby fall into their laps earlier that week, so they were a bit distracted and busy as new parents are. If the chance to adopt had come a month earlier, they would have canceled the party, but as it were they didn't want to cancel at the last minute. Needless to say, the soup party became much more than soup. In fact, the baby was more popular than the soup.

But hey, I liked the soup, which doesn't mean I hated the baby--all the people were strangers, so I focused on the soup. Kat and Eric were great, too. We stayed in their home. Great house--three floors not including the basement! The baby in the house must have been an aphrodisiac for all the, ahem, play X and I did in the bedroom on the third floor.

So we're back home and I'm eager to get some writing done, yet I'm writing in here. I had a story written, but needed some massaging, for the holiday reading at the Wordos last night. Alas, I was so tired from traveling (and I dawdled about the massaging of manuscript) that I decided not to go. I slept like a rock. I also got my rejection from Writers Of The Future, quarter finalist, which is a first for me.

I didn't get any writing done the last three or four days. And I didn't read much on the plane. Speaking of planes, I don't think I want to go anywhere via Houston, Texas ever again. To and from Cleveland we had a stop in Houston. The turbulence in and out of the Houston airport was so bad that I almost needed to use the barf bag. Yech. I was reading Shutter Island and in fact I was reading the part about the main character's bout with sea sickness. Yech again. It was the wrong time to read that. I get sick on rollar coasters, but I've never been close to being sick on a plane before. Sweat was pouring down my face! Then on the return trip, the plane was late into Houston and they changed gates on us, so we had to run to catch the other plane. I'm glad to be done with traveling!