Bah, there's rain falling into my life. The car is being increasingly cranky. Today, when idling at stoplights or in traffic (which I do a lot in my morning commute), it would idle quite low, and then hesitate when I took my foot off the brake, and finally jerk into gear with a lurch. I hope it's just a case of the transmission fluid being low/filthy, and not a more serious transmission problem. Because, um, if it's a more serious problem, it'll probably cost more to fix than the car is worth, and we'll be a bus-riding family until/unless I sell another novel and we can afford to get a new car!

We'll take it into the shop tomorrow and hope for the everloving best.

Also, tomorrow I get a haircut. Fortunately, the haircut place is easily accessible via public transit from our mechanic. It'll require several blocks of walking on both ends, but hey, I've been running a couple of miles each time I go to the gym lately anyway, so I can handle walking.

The gym is still going well. Now, six weeks into it, we seem to have incorporated going to the gym very neatly into our lives. I dare to hope we'll keep up the routine.

I stayed home sick yesterday -- a cough, a sore throat. I could've gone to work and functioned, but after spending three weeks solid with a cold last year because I didn't have time to rest (what with wedding planning), I didn't want to risk it. So I lazed about all day at home and drank tea and so forth. Feeling much better today -- congestion isn't as bad, throat is just a bit sore.

Having nothing to do all day but think about the Bridge novel was helpful, because I figured out how to solve a lot of the book's problems by writing a few very cool scenes. I am a happy writer now. The scenes should be super fun.

I haven't written much at all during the past couple of days, though. Haven't felt like it. So I've been working on the layout for Jenn Reese's Tales of the Chinese Zodiac chapbook instead. I'm thinking of setting up a website to take pre-orders, but I'm not sure what the cover price will be yet, so it'll be a while. So much to do...

What with the wedding, honeymoon, Xmas, Heather's birthday, Blue Heaven, Flytrap, a chapbook, and Wiscon expenses, we're pretty broke these days. We've been financially flush for a while now, so this is an unpleasant change of pace. (Let us not even talk about the dread possibility of further necessary dental work.) We're not broke in the sense that we're rolling pennies for gas, just that we can't swing by the comic shop and drop $50 or go have a nice dinner out on a whim at the moment. It should ease up in a few months, once the big raft of expenses are behind us. Or, you know, if I sell a novel. Or write some stories and sell those. The occasional PovertyFest is probably good for the soul anyway. It certainly makes life less complicated by narrowing my options, at least...

Update

So I tried to go to lunch, and the car wouldn't start. Dead battery! And then I remembered that, right before the battery died a month ago, the car was doing the same low-idle-jerky-acceleration thing. Using my mighty powers of reason, I determined that maybe we hadn't just left the interior light on too long last time the battery died. Maybe the battery is just freakin' old! (It's been in the car since we bought it; maybe since it was new, for all I know.)

So I got a jump, and went to the auto parts store, and got a new battery, and came back to work, and got some tools, and cursed and gnashed my teeth because my car has one of those anti-theft bars holding the battery down, and I didn't have a socket wrench in the right size to get the stupid bar unattached. I tried -- for too long -- with an adjustable wrench, to no avail. Finally one of my co-workers said "Hey, maybe I have something in my car that will work," and, lo, she had metric socket wrenches. And all was well.

So now it doesn't have to go to the shop, I don't think. Hurray!