I got news this morning that my dad went in for emergency surgery last night for a detached retina. Scary, but they caught it in time, and expect a full recovery. Also they checked the other eye and it’s fine. He’s resting more or less comfortably–in a hotel. See, my folks live at an altitude of 1,800 feet, and the doctor won’t let him be at that elevation until the eye is further healed, perhaps Monday. He’s a little cranky about that, but at least he has TV where he is, unlike at home. 🙂
I spent most of the day working on Hobgoblin, including a long time of listing out character backgrounds and motivations in a lot more detail than I did initially. This will be REALLY useful going forward. I don’t think I could have done this at the start; I needed to write the characters, have them come alive, for me to understand them enough to do this; but, conversely, now I need this information to get them written correctly from the beginning. If that makes sense. So I started going back through the novel, going over yet again the chapters I’ve already worked over several times in the last few weeks, tweaking and changing and rewriting. Eventually I may make forward progress that actually LOOKS like forward progress! But I’m happy with this. It’s making the whole thing so much more solid.
Also I went for a swim. Also the neighbor from across the street came over and wanted to look at the treeless back yard. Also I had nice phone conversations with my stepmom, my stepdad, my mom, and my dad. By the time I was done with all those, I felt like I should call my brothers just to complete the set. 🙂 Stepdad feels pretty certain that the matilija poppy will come back. I hope he’s right!
Also I made egg salad, which was scrumptious. Also I harvested (and ate) a lot of candy-sweet orange cherry tomatoes. Also I took some pictures to be framed. Also I made the mistake of going on line to look at the balance of my retirement fund.
Oh! Also I got a PDF made of my entire LiveJournal! Thanks to Elizabeth Bourne for posting about this–it was totally easy, and free, and now I have a really nicely usable archive of my blog from the beginning of time until this morning. I’d thought I might want to get it printed too, but it’s over 1,700 pages, so, um.
Wordy, me.