I'm taking part in Jenn's week-long double-dog dog-days dare. My goal is to write a story this week. (The Bridges book is going well, but I'm itching to do a story, so.)

We're back in Oakland; happy, productive, alive, and etc. We arrived late last night, thanks to the kind agencies of our friend David, who gave us a ride from the airport. I stayed up late in a desperate bid to reset my body clock, which was only partly successful; I woke today at 7:30 a.m., after 5 and a half hours of sleep. But I'm perfectly rested, and getting up tomorrow at the same time for work shouldn't be too difficult.

Today has been nice. Playing with the cats and beginning to unpack -- including shelving the many many books I retrieved from home. I finally have the whole run of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror in one place again! Except the new volume; I'll have to get to a bookstore this week and buy that... This morning I re-read "The Crawl" by Stephen Laws and "Residuals" by Paul McAuley & Kim Newman, in the 11th volume of the series. They're two of my favorite stories, and made me want to write short fiction.

We went to lunch at the Lakeshore cafe, which was yummy as always, and planned our dinner menu for the week. See, Heather and I are trying to be more frugal, take better care of ourselves, etc. We bought stuff to make actual meals (and some boca burgers for the inevitable night or two when we'll be too lazy to cook properly). We headed to the grocery store and actually adhered to our list, avoiding the temptations of chips, ice cream, &c. (The fact that we'd just eaten lunch helped.)

I'm reading The Devil in the White City, which is great stuff, engaging popular history. I knew quite a bit about H.H. Holmes already, and knew bits and pieces about the World's Fair from research for a story about Tesla and Edison that I never actually managed to write, but seeing it all together in context is fascinating. The notion of architecture and landscaping as fine arts is well worth thinking about further, too.

No big plans for the rest of the day. Relaxing on the last day of our vacation, pretty much -- reading, video games, DVDs, movies. Hope y'all are having a good Sunday.