I'm home early this morning because it's time for Nika's yearly visit to the vets for her booster shots. This is complicated by all the news on the radio about the controversies over whether dogs should really be getting yearly shots at all, or whether that's actually unhealthy overkill...but while the British vets' associations are still strongly recommending it, I guess we'll keep going along with it and keeping our fingers crossed. (This seems to be an international controversy, actually--apparently more American vets feel strongly in the other direction? Does anyone know any more about that?) Oh well. At least we're standing strong on NOT getting Nika any more rabies shots for at least another year, since she ended up with 4 in a single year, a couple years ago (as part of the international transportation complications), and two of those were supposed to last for a minimum of 4 years each. Urk.

On normal, non-vet-visit days, I've reorganized my schedule in a way that seems to be working out well. Now, after our 8-9 a.m. writing stint in the coffee shop, I'm actually walking with Patrick into the university for two or three hours of thesis work each morning in the graduate library. It's so much easier to work there than at home! (And that would be true even if the house were clean, instead of being an embarrassing mess that depresses me every time I look around it.) I've gotten more accomplished in the last three days of library-work than I did in the whole of last week. So I'm planning to stick with the new system...especially now that a new, fair-trade cafe with yummy hot chocolate has opened in the foyer outside the library....!

In fiction news, I'm just flailing around in the usual, uncomfortable interim phase, since I've finished the first draft of Masks and Shadows, I can't do any more revising work on Queen of Thorns until I get crits back, and I don't have a new novel to work on yet. I hate it! Want a novel, want a novel, want a novel! (Whew. Tantrum over, now.) So I'm in the middle of two different short stories, neither of which is very stable at the moment, I'm drumming my fingers obsessing about responses to various submissions packages, and I'm feeling hugely jealous of everyone who's in the middle of a novel right now. And I'm really looking forward to being finished with this itchy, uncomfortable, interim phase....

Oh well. Off to find Nika's immunization record and maybe even brush my hair before leaving the house again.