Okay, at long last, everything's been written and synopsized and outlines and printed out and put in envelopes or made into PDFs and emailed and mailed and backed up and put into the proper folder and... and... and... I'm done!

I don't plan on looking at or thinking about this novel for at least a month, until after the workshop in early September. I'll probably start going over it on my flight back from Portland after workshop, on the red-eye flight. Doh! I'm leaving there at 10 p.m. and arriving back home at 8 a.m. Fun times -- I'm gonna try and go to work the next day. We'll see how THAT goes.

But that's all in the future. For now, I'm looking forward to chilling out all weekend with Elizabeth, who's been a saint through all this workaholic madness of mine. I survived a bout of what felt a bit like pneumonia for 3-4 weeks while working on this novel, didn't get more than 6 hours of sleep most nights, and may have killed my printer in the process of churning out all the hardcopies. But hey, it was fun. Really!

Coincidentally, my Project from Hell at work is about finished up, with most of my writing and revising concluding today, if I get my act together -- why do things always seem to work out that way? Couldn't I have had a nice cushy couple months of editing courses instead of having to write two monstrous courses (whose word counts totalled about 60,000 words altogether)???

Oh, and before I forget, Elizabeth had a great, great dinner with out-of-towners Heather and Tim along with in-towners Janet and Jason on Wednesday night (Jason has a great recap of it, along with a fine photo that shows off my bad $12 haircut!). I enjoyed getting out of my hermit cave and actually hanging out with people. And the vanilla bourbon at the Irregardless Cafe was quite nice, thanks!

It's so cool hanging out with other writers and talking about what everyone's working on and what books are good to read (Heather gave Lizzie some great reading suggestions). We could've sat there and talked all night, but they kicked us out and we talked some more on the sidewalk -- Tim and me about novels and writing in general, and the rest of the gang talking weddings and stuff. Lots of fun (though the music inside the restaurant sometimes drowned out what Janet and Jason were saying, so I was forced to nod and smile -- just kidding!).

And I think that's everything I wanted to recap. I find it weird and a bit overwhelming when life gets so busy I don't have time to jot down what's happening in this journal or in my paper journal. I miss it. And I'm looking forward to getting to know my wife again, and maybe even doing some reading for fun again. Later!