Sadly, the vacation is well and truly over, and it's back to work today. Of course, that doesn't make any geographical difference to me, since I work at home...but it's a distinctly different mindset, and I'm struggling a bit to reorganize myself and fit back into a normal working schedule. Makes me realize how many different things I normally juggle, now that I have to learn how to balance them again...

However, it's all good, and the thesis work is progressing fairly well. I also read through about 100 pages of Masks and Shadows this morning before I started the academic work. This is just my first pass-through, where I get re-used to the characters and the way the book unfolds, and only do very minor line edits where they occur to me. I'm jotting down lots of notes like "This scene needs more build-up!!!", but I'm not going to stop and do anything about them until I've read through the whole book once and I have it in my head as a whole. The good news is that I'm actually really enjoying the process, enjoying the characters and their interactions even while I note the inconsistencies and issues. I think, just this once, I might actually enjoy the work of revision almost as much as the work of creating in the first place. (Of course, I'll have to write lots of new scenes for the revisions, so in a way, it's still first draft!) I'm also hoping to finally, finally catch up this week on the embarrassingly-belated crits I owe!

Apart from that, it's a cool, rainy day, but Nika and I will bravely venture out for our walk anyway, equipped with our snazzy new rain gear. (I like mine more than Nika likes hers, it must be said. I might leave hers at home unless the weather's really storming outside.) And since it's past three o'clock, it's probably getting on time to think about making lunch....