We came home on Friday, and arrived to the nicest welcome - a Christmas package of CDs from Karen! I've been listening to awesome, new-to-me music all weekend long. So far my favorite songs from the CDs are: a new version of "Peace Train" sung by Dolly Parton and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (so much fun!); and "Lorelei" by the Pogues (I can't believe I never heard this one before - it's a lovely fantasy-writing song). I have to say, no matter how panicky and neurotic I get about revision (especially for Congress of Shadows, as it turns out), there's no way not to relax and enjoy writing when you're doing it to a soundtrack of great new music sent by a friend. Thank you Karen!

Now here's the phrase I never thought I'd write: Curse you British Library! My website was always on the British Library server because I loved being part of the British Library (yeah, you know I'm a geek) and also because their hosting is free, although their uploads aren't. I haven't updated my website since July, though, mostly because BL changed their rules and will now only allow files to be uploaded from PCs through one particular FTP program. (I can't upload directly from my iBook for various other reasons specific to British Library website requirements.) So I put off the hassle of downloading the new (and money-charging) FTP program for months and months, but finally decided to get down to it this weekend...and it turned out that the program won't work on our PC! So there is now no possible way for me to update my pages.britishlibrary.net website!

Gaah. The good news is, the whole fiasco forced me to do what I should have done a long time ago and just buy a real website (and not just a forwarding domain name, which was my old compromise): http://www.stephanieburgis.com . So after much tearing of hair, I have moved and updated my full website to that address, and I think it's all working out okay there. If anybody notices any broken links or missing images, will you please let me know?

(Sadly, since there's no way for me to update my old page, I can't even put a note there to forward people to the new page...grr. Maybe sometime in 2007 I'll work out a solution to this one...)

But in unmixed good news, "Locked Doors" will be published in Strange Horizons tomorrow. Hurray! I've seen the galleys, and they look great. I'm counting down the hours...

And (as Patrick mentioned): we're going to Wiscon! We've booked the hotel room and the memberships. Much, much happiness. Madison, here we come!

Happy New Year's Eve, everybody. We won't be partying tonight (too tired, too lazy, too addicted to watching our season boxset of House), but we're enjoying it nonetheless.