First round!!!

Song of the day: “Gold forever” by The Wanted. It’s a little embarrassing, really. It is soooo boy band that I feel thirteen again. But anyway, despite the complete tackiness of the song, it’s cute enough to stick in my head.

So let’s get to the important stuff first. Yesterday one of the publisher packages went out in the mail. A.T.O.L. (the PNR novel), which had to go with a query letter, synopsis and the manuscript. Won’t hear anything until 12 weeks from now, but what the hey. Ya gotta start somewhere, right?

Then this morning a query letter went on the mail with A.I.L. (category romance), which has about the same time stamp on a response, if there will be any at all. So frustrating, eh, the time it takes to hear anything, and most of ‘m don’t allow for multiple submissions, so imagine how long it takes to try to sell a novel. *sigh* Such are the foibles of the poor writer. Hah.

Fun news that had me bouncing was that I got through the first round at ABNA. How’s that, eh? We worked on the pitch so long that it made it through this round at least, which is a wonderful confirmation that that was good. Yay! Was rather thrilling to go through the whole list (alphabetically) trying to find my name…and next to read the very excited “spoiler” from some palls on the discussion for a, who knew before I did. Hah. Phew. What a relief that we made it this far. Right now I can act semi-dignified, but don’t be fooled, I did some serious bouncing when I found out. Did a bunny hop through the carport and everything. Hah. I kept looking out to see what was taking big brother so long, muttering time and again, “Dude! Come on. Dude!” until about half an hour later he finally showed up and I said, semi cool, “Dude. We got through.”
Big brother: “Huh?”
Me: “We got through.”
Big brother: “Through where?” *I rolled my eyes*
Me: “The thirteenth. Saving Nina. Competition. We got through the first round.”
Big brother gets a clue, grins, and says: “Cool.”
We high five and head on over to check out the pitch one last time. Hah.
Now we’re back to…yes, you know what I’m going to say now, right? WE’LL SEE!

First let’s handle yesterday. I started the day about fifteen minutes later than usual, and then headed out to the top of the mountain to fix the sideview mirror of the Opel. Which had fallen off again, for the gazillionth time, and I couldn’t face the horror of the sibs fixing it, again, with duck tape. Seriously. Duck tape? *shivers*

There was the whole preparing session of the stuff that needed to go out in the mail, which took forever, and then, because my feet had turned to ice because of it, I went up to the storage, to help grandpa put a new constellation together for the wood stacks. The last one succumbed under the weight, so it really was time…and boy was it cold! Really. The temps have been incredibly nippy these past few weeks.

Managed to choke down some beef again *pats self on shoulder*. I think I’m starting to get used to it. At least the structure when the taste is completely smothered by satay sauce. I don’t have the gagging reflex anymore, so yay for me.

News about tenant. It’s official, she’s got a kidney stone of about nine millimeters in diameter. A painful, annoying and downright time-consuming ailment, which’s healing is being hampered by her tendency to forget to drink. Despite the fact that it is painful for her, we are vastly relieved that it is something relatively harmless now that she’s under the doctor’s care. She still is not home, though, partly because of the drinking, and partly because it hurts.

Big brother and I have been preparing for the new job. We picked up the tankless water heater yesterday afternoon, only to discover that we’re going to have to build something around the thing anyway, despite the fact that it’s an outside machine. The place where we’re installing it is in the open air, and bugs are always looking for a spot to crawl and nest into. Since we were in the village anyway, we also picked up the fixed chainsaw. The young man working there warned that we should be careful with it, because it was difficult for him to get parts for this particular brand.

Finished writing the extra scene for V.L. I think it works, but we’ll have to edit it some, tweak it, I’m sure. We’ll see, maybe it will turn out that we’ll remove it completely again, and put something else in there after all.

Am getting too little sleep again. Just don’t manage to get to bed before two in the morning, and that isn’t smart. In particular not since we’re trying to build a rhythm of starting the days around eight in the morning. Let’s see if I can manage earlier tonight.

As to today. I was pretty much KO during the night. What with the cold I dug deep under the blankets and it was so blissfully warm that I just didn’t want to wake up. Hah.

After the morning chores and writing, big brother and I started on planning for the kitchen roof. Yay. We gathered materials, such as roof beams, plating and all that. Considering that the beams were still set in an older construction, we spent more than an hour taking that apart with tire iron and hammer, but they’re loose now, and we should be able to get some of it done by tomorrow.

But then, I also need to take Knight II to the vet, because I don’t like how his ear looks. The swelling appears to be worse again, so I want the vet to look at that. Poor darling is really pained by it, and I don’t like it.

Had to head on out to the job site today to check what all we’d need to install the water heater, including its protection. It should be doable, considering the old one is of the same brand and has all the same connections. It’ll be interesting to see how fast we can do it, in particular since the owner would like us to work on her trees a bit as well, if at all possible within the day. Another we’ll see moment there.

As for what else we did today…well, there was a quick trip to town, which included running into the store to get some French bread for the pumpkin soup Cousin Ed offered to make for supper because I didn’t have time.

Which brings me to the end of today’s blog, really, considering that for the life of me I can’t remember what else we did today. *sigh* What on earth is wrong with my memory, darn it. You’d think that there were enough brain cells left for me to remember two friggin’ days. Hah.