The phone saga continues, as ever, but I think I've moaned enough about that here. The good news is that BT is now so embarrassed they're actually taking money off our phone bill and offering other incentives to make up for their mistakes. The bad news is that they can't get an engineer out to look at our lines until Saturday morning. Bleagh. At least (knock on wood!) that should mean that we'll have a dial tone again by Saturday afternoon. (Of course, whether our neighbors will keep theirs afterwards is an open question...)

I had a new experience yesterday--I was surfing through job listings for next year and came across one that shot jolts of electricity through me, everything in me screaming I Want! Talk about motivation! I've been working VERY intensely on the PhD stuff, and setting up plans for getting more (and more impressive) work done soon. Sadly, I got the full particulars and app forms for the job today and feel fairly certain that I won't get it...I just don't have that list of publications yet to stick at the bottom of the form, and they say several hundred people are expected to apply for the four available positions...but oh well. At least it's gotten me moving. And next time a really cool job comes up...

For the first time in a while, we didn't watch a DVD last night, and it turned out to be great. The evening felt so much longer, in the best way! Nika was happy, too, to get more playtime and snuggling. This morning we rolled out of bed and into town even earlier than our usual target, and I managed to finish my new short story, "Now You See Me." The ending's still pretty rough, but hey, it's a first (and still handwritten!) draft. It doesn't need to be perfect yet. And it really was an awful lot of fun to write. It's always nice when stories turn out that way....