1) This weekend was buried under a morass of self-pity and tissues...and that is where I shall leave it for everybody's sake! Colds suck.

2) I love reading pretty much everything that Jennifer Crusie writes, but until now I hadn't found her online writing workshop particularly helpful, just because her approach to writing is so diametrically opposed to mine in so many ways. (Not that that's a bad thing - it's just that we think about writing in such different ways, most of the time, that her methods don't tend to work for me.) However, today I found the big wonderful exception in her post on Symbol & Metaphor, which was astonishingly useful, and on a topic I've never thought much about (except, of course, for groaning over it during the obligatory essays on The Scarlet Letter, back in high school). It was probably the first time I've read about the conscious use of symbols and metaphors in a way that actually made intuitive sense to me. As I read it, I found myself actually getting excited about it, and about how I could apply what she was talking about to Kat (ooh, her Mama's magic mirror and magic books and Kat's own reticule and, and, and...).

3) My laptop has still not arrived. Bah! According to the UPS tracking service, it could arrive any time today...or tomorrow. So I'm twitching every single time I hear a car pass our house. Pleasepleaseplease come soon, new laptop!

4) The best news of this week (for me at least): Patrick's story "Uncle Vernon's Lie" has been reprinted in Serendipity! "Uncle Vernon's Lie" is my personal favorite of his stories so far, and not just because he wrote it as a birthday present for me. It's got storytelling, freaky tea leaves, really scary owls, and more! You can read the story here. If you like it, please don't forget to vote on a rating for it at the bottom of the page - readers of Serendipity are encouraged to give ratings to each story, from 1 - 10, which then show up for everyone to see. (Needless to say, you can also rate it if you don't like it, but as Patrick's wife, I'm hardly going to encourage that!)