28 August 2004

We have no belfry. Bats, however, we have. Or at least bat. It's a sneaky little devil. Small and accomplished at getting in and getting around. Timprov has been attempting to stun it with a tennis racket or other long implement for two nights running, with only limited success, so it's apparently a tough bat as well as a sneaky one.

I cannot say this thrills my soul. Nor am I sure what else to do about it than keep the tennis racket at the ready. I am not prepared to share my house with uninvited mammals. I am rather territorial in this regard. Any advice would be welcome.

I have finished The Stormwatcher, and I'm going to give it a big fat meh. If you haven't read Graham Joyce, don't start with this one. I have now just barely cracked open Karina's birthday present to meeeeee, Mary Gentle's 1610: A Sundial in a Grave. It is large. It will likely eat my brain. When I wrote to thank her for it, I hadn't opened the front cover yet, and I mentioned the brain-eating. Then I opened it to find that she had written about the brain-eating. Apparently we also have a psychic brain-eating link. Or maybe it's just a psychic expectation-of-brain-eating link. I'm not really sure how it's better than starting The Confusion, except that it will have an ending that ends at the end of this book, and that it is, despite its mass, softcover. So if I read it lying down and drop it, it will merely maim me instead of killing me outright. (Actually, it's not even 600 pages in trade paper, and the 600 page mark was where Quicksilver hit its stride, so I think we can officially deem it "shortish, sort of.") I hope to be done with 1610 before leaving for WorldCon, but it isn't such a high priority that I would neglect other things or refuse to take it on the plane.

(Though I do hate bringing half-finished books on the plane. It seems wasteful somehow.)

I've already started the kitchen chores this morning, making the rosemary oil for the buns and washing up a few things instead of putting them in the dishwasher so that I can continue the wallowing in domesticity. We'll be heading to Byerly's. Then more kitchen stuff. With an occasional pause to throw a tablecloth at the table in the sunporch, stuff like that.

Have a good Saturday.