Our luggage has finally arrived! Hooray! It arrived just before 6pm last night, about 56 hours late. Quite a bit of it was soaked through, one of our nice new suitcases is completely filthy...but heck, it's all here, and we're happy.

In even better news, Nika's vets have finally diagnosed what's wrong with her nails, and it's totally treatable! She's on 3 pills a day for the next 4-6 weeks (at least), but with a bit of luck, within about a month, her nails should be coming in strong and healthy. Now, if we can just get to that point without any more of her current, very fragile nails breaking off in the meantime...[knock on wood!] There's also a very, very slight chance that this problem might be what's been causing all of her major skin issues...but that's such a slight chance that we're not counting on anything. If her nails improve, we'll all be so relieved.

And in the final good news of today, I did the requested rewrite of my short story (unnamed until I find out how the magazine feels about it!) and sent it off about half an hour ago. I don't know whether it'll be accepted on this round, but I do feel sure that it's a better, stronger story now, and I'm really glad to have revised it. Best of all, that's my first rewrite goal accomplished! I'm also (finally) midway through doing final edits on our Andromeda Spaceways story (weeks and weeks late--so sorry, Zara!).

It's a beautiful, warm, sunny day outside, and this afternoon Patrick & I took Nika down to the woods in the valley nearby. It's the first time I've been down there since I got so sick back in February. Today the bluebells were out, the smell of wild garlic filled the air, and a 17-week-old black labrador puppy came hurtling down the path to play with Nika. I was very happy.