Random ramblings

This weekend is my mother-in-law's birthday.  Two weeks from Monday is my mother's birthday--she's two years younger.  Ironically, Odysseus's mother and mine had both of us at almost the exact same age to the day: he's almost exactly the same amount older than me. 
 
Yeah, we went to see my in-laws today, and permitted the pixie to overnight with them.  The imp chose playing outside for a while, then his Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon series, then playing a kids' computer game on the desktop over watching a movie.  The imp has just gone to bed with a book, and with the door cracked to let the cat in to sleep on him if she wants to.

We had some cooler weather this week.  It wasn't bad weather, just a cool front with drier air coming through--no storms for us. 

The kids enjoyed it a bit, but the nicest day was one where neither Odysseus nor I really felt up to taking them outside to play.  So, today, they took advantage of being at Grandma and Grandpa's (and the weather still being halfway decent) by playing outside until they were content with it.

The cats have been discomfited, yet again.  I got one of the things I'd intended to do done: I pitched the old printer, and got a pair of shelves to hold a bunch of stuff on top of the long set of heavy wooden shelves that act as an entertainment center/storage unit.  I'd cleared the clutter, first, so Cricket thought she'd found a wonderful, new sleepy spot. 

Sad kitty.  I won't even let her climb into the new shelves to sleep.

I discovered that I hadn't gotten all of my music off of my old laptop.  I may or may not be missing files, as well.  I'm going to ask Odysseus to try the trick that had it working all day the first time it started in with this little trick, and see if I can't get the rest of my stuff off. 

As I've done research on what may or may not have been going on, it seems like the cooling fan is going.  It may be fixable, at least enough for the kids to play with it.  I'm probably not going to trust it for writing and work, though. 

One of the things that didn't transfer was the album I've been writing to for the past couple of months.  I really do need that--it helps me think in this particular world.

I've pulled through and finished the chapter I was working on for the current Project.  Yes, with a capital P.  It's bigger than the short story I thought it was at first, and it's a lot more complex than the other things I've worked on, and has me jumping to research things more than once per chapter.  And it's getting more and more complex all the time.  I'm having fun with it, but I'm probably going to try shopping it out with Baen after I finish it.  It's...yeah.  It's some hard science, some social science sci-fi.  I'll probably finish sometime within the next six months or so, then go back to work on another project for a while.  After that, I'll do the edit thing, and send it off to whomever wants to beta read for me before I submit it to a real publishing house. 

I've got other news to announce next week.  Don't want to announce it too soon, though.