Today I'm acting on doctor's orders - or, at least, the strong advice of a good, smart friend, who ordered me to STOP reading pregnany/birth articles that freak me out and cuddle up with Maya and some Regency romances instead! Since I spent yesterday afternoon feeling horribly freaked out by some worst-case-scenario baby health stories I read online, I think her advice was spot-on target. So my plan for today, as well as revising KbS, is to dig out the most light-hearted Regency romances I can find in the staggering piles of books in our end room. (They are truly scary, towering piles. One more item for the list of Stuff To Do: buy more bookshelves! But not today.)

I'm also getting really excited about the week ahead. Tomorrow is my and Patrick's 4-year wedding anniversary, hooray! So we're planning to really enjoy the day with a nice meal out, presents, possibly a café trip, and probably a movie (at least on DVD). It'll be lower-key than most of our anniversaries just because we'll also need to spend time packing for our big trip on Friday. We're driving down to Wales for eight days, and I'm really looking forward to it. Not only is it wonderful just to go somewhere different for a while, but we'll get to hang out with some wonderful people, meet a new member of the family (woot!), AND I will finally, finally get my long-desired research trip to Bath! I am soooo happy about that. (I have been to Bath before - but only once, for 6 hours, and during that time I didn't concentrate on any of the things that turned out to be the key details for use in Kat by Starlight.)

I love Bath regardless of any research needs - it still feels amazingly Regency, and it's a really beautiful city - but I'm particularly thrilled to be able to spend some real time in the Roman Baths, where so much of Kat by Starlight is set. I anticipate a lot of tooth-grinding and hair-pulling afterwards, when I have to revise the choreography of those scenes to match the real physical layout of the Baths, but I'm really happy that I will be able to fix them properly. (I did go to the Baths last time, but since we went there just for fun, I didn't take any notes or focus on anything but enjoying the wonderful, eerie atmosphere...which of course worked out well, since that's what inspired the main plot of KbS, but it left a lot to be desired in terms of research!)

So things are looking really good in the week ahead, and I also wanted to link quickly to the coolest thing I've found online in the past few days. I absolutely adore this new steampunk story, being posted as a "letter game" on an LJ community. My favorite entry so far is the postcard with the list of items required for the ship's new Principal Espionage Officer...so much fun! Do check it out.