I had a moment of total fan-girl joy today when I found out that Robin McKinley now has a blog! She's been one of my very favorite authors ever since I first read Beauty when I was ten years old. I've genuinely loved all of her books, and I can't even count how many times I've re-read Beauty or Rose Daughter, while Sunshine is my favorite vampire novel in the world, hands-down - and since in her first 11 days of blog-writing, she's already written several lovely entries about dog-rearing and one entry about her experiences with ME/CFS, I am already addicted to her blog-writing, too.

And in the best news of this week (or month!) Patrick and I have decided to go wild & crazy and take off for a long weekend in Edinburgh in the beginning of October. I spent yesterday afternoon desperately phoning up bed & breakfasts, and this morning desperately phoning up pet-sitting agencies, and hoorah - I declare success! (Well, only tentative success in the pet-sitting department, since I've only found a tentative place for Maya, without confirmation yet - but still, the tentative place sounds good, and if worst comes to absolute worst, I do know for sure that there are vacancies in the good nearby kennel.) We don't know exactly what we'll do in Edinburgh for most of the time, but there was one point we both agreed on when we first thought of this idea: we will absolutely, definitely, no-questions-about-it be vising Plaisir du Chocolat EVERY day! Ohhhh, those incredible hot chocolates... I am already counting down the days!

In other news, I've finished the first round of revisions on the first three chapters of Kat by Moonlight (hurray!) and Patrick's posted pictures from his hike through the Strid Wood (near Bolton Abbey), as well as more pictures from the abbey itself, on his Flickr account. Now it's time to get back to my knitting (must finish the new scarf before leaving for Edinburgh!) and maybe listen to a BBC Radio 4 comedy or two...