26 September 2004

Decent work on the book yesterday, and I'm impatient to work on it some more tomorrow. I think this is a good thing. I think this is the way we want things to be. But it's also okay if I decide to postpone this week's official day off because I'm in end-of-book groove. The point is to be giving myself a rest from time to time, not exactly when that rest has to be.

I made a wild rice pudding with dried sour cherries in it last night. This has been on my list to try for ages and ages. I haven't tried it yet, though, because I was tired and no longer hungry when it finished baking. It was kind of fiddly: forty-five minutes of stirring, fairly energetically because our stove doesn't have a low enough low heat. You can read while stirring, though, so if it's good, it might be worth making later.

Brunch today will be dim sum with Yore, and in the evening, Stella and Heathah are coming down and up for coffee. Very social, for me, although I suppose we could have squeezed something in the middle there.

I finished reading The Grand Tour, which was great fun. Definitely recommended to those of you who liked Sorcery and Cecelia, though I think separating Kate and Cecy again for the next book (of course there should be a next book!) would be good. I read the latest Scientific American and have started Bill Brittain's My Buddy, the King, which is for some contract work. So far I don't think much of it. It has that condescending "just a regular kid" voice that annoyed me when I was a kid and has not yet stopped annoying me. Also, if you're going to make Noel Coward jokes over the kids' heads, you should at least make them funny to the parents. (Better yet, do not make Noel Coward jokes in modern-day children's books written in 1989.) In fact, if you're going to have the characters talk and act like a Hardy Boys novel with extra dollops of silliness, have the decency to at least set the thing in the past. Suspension of disbelief does not just apply to speculative fiction, people! Honestly.

I know, I just get crazy with the rules sometimes.