One of her grad-school friends lives in Norfolk, not that far off the beaten track, so she's staying the night there. I got a call as I was doing the pizza thing to say she'd arrived safely. It's good, having a place to stop over, because it reduces the temptation to do it all in one night. Oh, and the truck rental (for cheap) is for up to 5 days, so no hurry.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, we're getting along. I get a bit overwhelmed, sometimes, at just how needy the dog is. He'd like nothing better than to play with me all day long; or, if I must be gone part of the time, then certainly every waking moment while I'm home. It was rainy this morning, and he hates going out in the rain. But it stopped, mostly, by evening, and we went for a bit of a walk. It's cooler, though, tending toward snow tomorrow, so we did it pretty quickly. And then played tug-of-war with some of his toys in the house.

I do hope the writers' strike is over soon. There's a whole lotta nuthin' on television lately.

I'm slowly getting back into things at work. There's been a round of meetings the last couple days, which help refocus the mind on whatever it was I was doing, and how it fits in to the Grand Scheme of Things (to say nothing of Stuff).

My time keeper came around several times yesterday, proposing various schemes for accounting for all the leave I took. I think we finally ended up with a good one, which preserves most of my annual leave, by dipping into my immense amount of saved-up sick leave. And it all seems to be perfectly legal, if you read the correct part of the handbook.

I miss my honey. :-(

So, the latest WFC has six stories and (as of this writing) 14 votes. If you haven't read and voted yet, please do; at least one of the stories is really quite worth the read. And no, it's not the one I contributed to. Maybe the idea is getting tired, and we should let it rest a while?

For a while now, I've thought it'd be cool to have a place to post all the stuff you kinda sorta worked on for one fun challenge or another, but didn't finish in time, or at all. That Tom Waits cover for MFC2 (or was that ZZ Top?). A cool photo of whatever, that still needs some photoshopping or color balance. A little idea for a story that never went anywhere. An algorithm that's just too cool to not work quite right.

So whaddya think? /etc/fun? or not?

Did I mention that I miss my partner? Not as much, I'm expecting, as she misses me, and home, and the critters and her normal life here.