Fly By...

That's what I think I'll call months from now on-- "Fly Bys." With everything that's going on, they all seem to do just that. We've had lots of stressful challenges lately, with car issues, school things, family matters, home repairs, job stuff. The cousin I moved up here in August is scheduled to go into assisted living on the first, which gives us 9 days to close up financial stuff and move her. She is not amenable to, well, anything, but it's really not safe for her to live by herself anymore. Nothing has changed about the job-- despite my best efforts to that end, and it's just more aggravating as days go by-- and precious little time has been devoted to writing, although I keep hoping. The universe has not particularly smiled upon us so far this year, but again, I remain ever hopeful. The wall is still not fixed, although someone finally came out today and looked at it. Faced with this 9 day thing, I can't help but see (again) that every time I seem to catch up on stuff to do and get free time within my grasp that I might devote to Highborn, something thunders in to snatch it away. My sweet Goblin also faces surgery a week from today to remove some skin tags and have a cyst on his side removed. Keep your fingers crossed about that one. He's been very apt to suddenly become scared of nothing lately, and I don't imagine being cut & sewn will help his trust issues.

Weather seems to be trying to warm up and we're seeing some green in the yard. Okay, so they're weeds, but they are green.

In With the New...

My sweet Goblin boy came in second place in the Danes Online contest (no sense posting the URL, since they don't keep the winning pictures up there -- so sad). He was ousted by a snowball-attacking Dane named Quake. Fine -- we moved to Arizona to get away from snow. So there. ::grin:: I will say, however, that for some reason January was a short month-- I check this site every day and posted news of the contest on LJ as soon as it came up, which wasn't until January 17th. Normally they change the photos on or very close to the first. So we wuz robbed. Robbed, I say!

In other news, I have finally redesigned yvonnenavarro.com. It's way past due, with the old one being full of JavaScript rollovers and eye-popping bright colors and banners and on and on. This time around I've gone for a clean, mostly black & white look. It's easy on the eyes, easy to navigate, and looks, I think, pretty sharp and professional. Most of the book pages and whatnot still have old design stuff on them-- I just wasn't willing to hold off the upload until I finished with every danged one of them. So if you run across pages with pupil-blistering purple or red backgrounds... oops. I'll get to them eventually. I also whacked out the photo pages in favor of a Flickr account, so many of the old photos are kaput. I'll upload some more of 'em to the Flickr page as I go along. I'm hoping to get some visitors here and there so that more than just my own lonely little location shows up on the ClustrMap, a thingy I stole from The Husband's website because, well, I thought it was cool.

So... comments about the new website?

Vote for Goblin!

Yes, it's true -- my sweet-grumpy ol' boy has got himself up on the voting page at Danes Online. Since it is the season of politics and such, and everyone is in such a voting mood (you are, aren't you?), won't you please please please vote for him HERE? I don't think there's any prize or such to be gained, but wouldn't it just be the greatest boost to Mr. Laid-Back to be voted the cutest?

Sadly, only one vote per ISP address. We needs all the helps you can give -- it seems Dane Quake has lots of friends! And besides, you gotta love that Goblin upside down smile!

Output!

Yes! The first post on Blogger! Actually, I've had this for a loooong time but never posted to it. As part of the New And Improved Me, I'm desperately going to try to remember to post in all the places I'm supposed to, all of the time. Hey, I'm trying.

So:

Okay, so I haven't managed that one hour a day thing, but I did manage an almost all day writing stint today. That pile-o-hours got me 6 pages, and it's been since October that I wrote more than 2 or 3 pages at a time, so I'm pretty pleased. The story is finally starting to move on its on, the characters are starting to think outside my box, and I think I mentioned before that I've finally decided on HIGHBORN as the title. Sweet.

Here, at last, is a current word count, which is pretty good improvement over the last posting of 22,457:



Lots going on. Tomorrow we're (finally) going to take down the Christmas decorations. Theoretically we'll actually put them where they belong in the garage as opposed to leaving stacks of boxes on the garage floor and wads of wrapping paper and empty tubes in the drawing room. Time will tell. The wall (see my LiveJournal post of December 30th) is still not fixed; already there are issues with the driver's insurance company, which after promising the adjuster would make an appointment when we could be here, had an adjuster come out for an appraisal when no one was home. I have yet to speak to said adjuster. I can see this has the potential to be an unpleasant thing.

I got a bunch of great books for Christmas, the last of which just came in because of a lost shipment. Good stuff, and I'm looking forward to reading... after I get some new reading glasses. I think the glasses being out of date (and that stupid dry eye thing) really contribute to me not reading as much for pleasure anymore. I miss it, and I have way too many great books waiting.

Dawgs are fine, The Husband (Weston Ochse) is okay. Occasionally I have to pound on him to keep him straight. Family is as okay as they're going to be. Still working on the job thing. Some potentially interesting stuff there, but we'll see. In the meantime, plesae keep invisible fingers crossed on my behalf.

I'm working, very slowly, on a long overdue complete new web page for myself. Only have a few pages done so far, but it's coming along.

Alex got her report card, which was pretty doggone good. We're all happy, and so sometime soon we're going out for steak to celebrate.

We have six dead or nearly dead plants to dig up and return to Home Depot and Lowe's for refunds. One would think these stores would learn not to sell (and guarantee) outdoor plants here that cannot survive the high desert (i.e., COLD) winter climate.

Guess that's about it. Happy New Year, all!