Peeking into the rock

53,826 / 75,000 (71.0%)

or

53,826 / 80,000 (67.0%)

and I have spent about two hours trying to get a decent phone plan. It looks like we will have to make two phone calls for every one call we make, in order to escape paying for many many more minutes than we'll ever use.

and I'm sending my "it's been six months, do you know anything about my book?" letter to Tor. No, I didn't do it back when I first said I would. And I asked Marty Halpern of Golden Gryphon if they do take novel submissions. He tried to scare me by saying he wouldn't be able to look at it for three months and it wouldn't come out till 2006 or 2007. Hah! I laugh at three months! I say "feh!" to 2007. That's nothing.

Well, maybe.
I have sent out the first-three to the publisher that accepted my query for Esperanza Highwat. What I'd like to do is to re-initiate the process with the publisher that didn't actually read it a couple of years ago, but it's embarrassing to approach them, so I guess I won't. But I think I'll query them on what is now called The Conduit thanks to Chris Hedgehog Dollin, when the revision is done, and I expect that to be soon. I expect to be working on the recovery of Afterwar by the end of January.

I bought a peak flow meter. I feel a bit silly about it, because my initial reading is 480 whatchacallits and the expected normal for my age and height is 466 whatchacallits. I had used the inhaler earlier, at the dentist's, to stop coughing, so that may have had an effect. But really I think the reading reflects my barrel-chest -- big lungs for my size.

I just added the bit to chapter 2 that needs to go in there -- I have a paper with a note for each chapter. I'm doing a chapter or three a day until the beta reading happens. Now I go paint paint paint.

And put a funny looking squash in the oven. For ravioli, or maybe kreplach -- I still don't know the difference -- for Thanksgiving. Maybe cream of squash soup, too, to float the raviolis (or kreplachs) in. And there will be enough to make a pie too.

Did I say that I recently discovered I'm losing weight again? Slowly?

dang, I had that all misspelled and stuff. I hope nobody read it.