I've spent the weekend listening to Christmas carols, and am feeling much, much more seasonally inclined. Now, if I can just work up the energy for conference papers, job applications, etcetera....All should be finished by the end of Wednesday, thank goodness. Unfortunately, Nika has picked up a nasty case of boredom-licking, licking the skin of her inner elbow so much that it's turning red and raw. This is a normal Border Collie sign of deep, deep boredom, it always happens at times when I've had to leave her or ignore her more than usual, and it nearly always turns into an expensive nightmare of medication and guilt. Can't wait until we have kids someday and I get to feel guilty over the horrible self-destructive habits they pick up when I have to work!

Other than the licking issue, though, everything's going pretty well. I finished Chapter Twelve of Music of the Stars this morning and wrote the first page of Chapter Thirteen. The plot is swinging along happily, and for once, I feel like I really know where I'm going with it. I figure I should enjoy the feeling while it lasts...

We spent the weekend watching the extended edition of Return of the King, and as many extras as we could healthily fit in. The extras are great--really interesting--and very personally reassuring to me as an author. (The movie could have been SO BAD if the writers had stuck with their original ideas! The first drafts sucked! What a relief to see how much revision can help...and what a good script can come out of such a bad one...) I like the theatrical version of the movie better than the extended version, but it was still interesting to see the added scenes.

I spent yesterday afternoon flipping through art books at the bookshop/cafe. I've been in a mood to see art lately, but I never had time this past week to go wander around the art museum while I was in town. (Which is too bad, because the Leeds Art Gallery is free and very good, with lovely fantasy Waterhouse paintings and so on.) It was amazingly fun to look through books of paintings--some by painters I already knew I liked (Waterhouse, Monet) and some by painters I'd only heard of (John Singer Sargent, David Hockney). By the end of the hour, story ideas were buzzing through my head. It's funny how looking at one kind of art can be so good at inspiring another...

Alas, my procrastination can only go on for so long. I think it's really time to go work on that job application.