As of this morning, the last of our Flytrap and Zodiac (and recent other 'zine and chapbook) orders are gone, gone, gone! Well, they're sitting at the Post Office, anyway. It's a huge load off, and it's nice not to have great teetering piles of magazines and envelopes and suchlike all over the living room. My stress levels have plunged accordingly! Maybe now I can concentrate on writing some fiction again.

Last night we had a nice surprise. We knew Scott and Lynne were going to be in the area Tuesday, but they expected to be here around lunchtime, so we didn't make plans to see them. Pesky day jobs. But, luckily for us, they were delayed, and we came home to find them waiting for us on our front steps! We drank some margaritas and chatted in the back yard, then took a long stroll through the neighborhood, and finally got some dinner at Holy Land, home of yummy falafel and homemade lemonade. So Heather and I managed to hang out with friends and get a little exercise, which is a rare and wonderful combination. We need to go down and visit them in Santa Cruz sometime soon, now that summer is in its full splendor.

Oh, and they brought us two bottles of the sparkling dessert wine we love from Bonny Doon Vineyard. They rock!

We've been watching the last season of Six Feet Under on DVD. We've only got two episodes left, and will likely watch them tonight. That show is really emotionally pummeling me! (But in a good way.)

Otherwise, I'm reading stuff, and hoping I don't have an ear infection, and thinking about cool stuff to put in the sequel to Blood Engines, and snuggling with my wife, and writing obituaries at work, and listening to old episodes of This American Life, and so on. Heather and I still haven't found time to have a nice dinner to celebrate my novel sales, and my Mythopoeic nomination, and her recent cool news (which you should go congratulate her on, if you haven't)! Maybe we'll get some sushi this week. We've been too busy to celebrate! To celebrate! And that, by any standard, is just too damn busy.

The weekend will be busy too, but good. We're going to Writers with Drinks on Saturday night, since our friend Lori Ann White is reading. And there's a birthday party Sunday I should attend. I'm sure I'll find time to loll about indolently at some point, though. It's what I'm good at.