well.

The application fee for the Charles University medical program in Prague is $47: the tuition and fees are $14K/year.

The entrance exam must be taken in Prague, and the questions are written in Czechlish. (Which are vector?)

I made my first fresh apricot pie of the season yesterday, from windfall apricots, therefore mostly somewhat underripe, but they cooked up lovely. I think I may be able to spare the life of the apricot tree, by the way. Zak made the pie crust according to a new style derived from French style. This is how he did it:

1+1/2 c all-purpose flour (not pastry)
1/2 c almond meal
1 c frozen butter
couple tablespoons sugar, splash of vanilla

grate the butter into the flour, then cut it in
when it's pea size lumps and not too even pour a couple tablespoons ice water over it and knead it briefly.

Freeze it overnight preferably: we had an hour and a half

It rolls and handles nicely, it's tender, but I'm not sure that it isn't too rich. In this case, because the apricots were tart, it worked nicely. We ate the pie hot with half and half on it. I seasoned the apricots with vanilla, almond extract, Meyer lemon of course, and I meant to put in cardamom or cinnamon and forgot.


And finally: I have almost figured out everything that happens in the big party scene, and I think the stateroom doors aspect is diminishing and that very little of the action that doesn't directly involve our guys is going on the page. And that's all right. But I'm going to do some more choreographing before I write it.

I have a name issue.
A dozen and a half characters, of whom some are minor. A major character named Patrick and one named Parris. Is that confusing? Every time I try to rename one of them I hate the result.

Maybe I could do something with the confusion, if there is any. I've already changed several names in the story because they were too similar (Mary Anne, Marisa, Marie, all kind of minor characters of consequence)

On another front, I have figured out something for when I get back to Afterwar, and I'm noting it here for my own benefit.
First chapter: the war is over, pretty much as it is. Second chapter: "the first camp"

The day that Pablo learned the war was over was the day the war started for children in another town. The weather was the same: high and blue, with a brisk inciting wind. The school was similar, podded classrooms plumping into a bright green field. The children ran and ran in the wind, but they were not running from other children playing a game. They were running from the incidental fires started by precision missiles aimed at insurgent headquarters in the urgent care clinic next door to the school. Insurgent was the new word used for the people who refused to leave the towns so that the Puros could resettle their own people there. They used to be called other things.

The wind that blew the promise of peace through Pablo's town and fanned the flames through this town blew the children, still running, out of their hometowns and into the great valley.

Some of them fetched up at Maris Camp.
and then mumble mumble we somehow have to get specific while not naming this little girl who will become Resi's mother at fourteen and die before she's eighteen. It's important for the reader not to know her name or the town she comes from but my current understanding of the story indicates that the reader needs to see Resi's timeline concurrent with Pablo's, even though it naturally starts years later than Pablo's does.