After another look at the forecast and at the football schedule for the big college town I'd be driving through midday on Saturday (no home game this week), I've decided to pull the trigger and travel a day early. So today will be busy. The to-do list is long, but I think it's doable.

I had a burst of sanity and cancelled my planned activity for tomorrow morning. I could probably have fit everything in, but freeing up 2+ hours should result in much less stress.

After looking at the latest forecast, I think I will move my travel up a day. Monday won't be a good day for traveling across Arkansas, with a chance of severe weather. So I'll have to get a lot done today and tomorrow.

The weather forecast is not accommodating my travel plans. It's difficult to plan for a two-day trip halfway across the country. If I leave Saturday morning, there may be scattered showers in the morning, but then the rest of the day and Sunday should be clear.

If you were waiting for the paperback version of Weaving & Wyverns, it's now available at Amazon (it should show up on other platforms eventually). Links to all the places you can buy it are at shannaswendson.com/writing/weav...

Since it rained yesterday, I finally set up the new dehumidifier in my basement. After half an hour, the air in there already smells less musty. I have to run it for 24 hours for the first cycle, so it should be much better by then. I guess it was too much for just DampRid.

Recipe serving results are so weird. Tonight I made one recipe that supposedly made 4 servings that made at least 8 and one that supposedly served 4 that made 1 serving. It might have made 2 servings as just a side dish, but I had it as more of an entree.

I wish they'd give a cast list showing who's doing which voices on The American Revolution because I'm getting distracted trying to identify them. They just list names at the end, and IMDB lists them all as playing "self." Some are obvious, but there are others that are just on the edge of familiar.

One of my favorite little pleasure discoveries is the wooden wick candle. It flickers like a wood fire and makes lovely crackling noises. I have one that smells like wood smoke with a hint of vanilla. It's the next best thing to having a fireplace, perfect for a rainy November day.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of intelligence governs the shuffle function on iTunes (or Apple Music, or whatever they're calling it this week. Not a subscription thing, just playing my music I've ripped from CDs or downloaded). The selections are often eerily apt or seem to follow a theme.

I woke this morning from a vivid dream about discussing with someone the uses of extreme wealth and what we would do if we had it. One example I cited was a famous film director who had a string quartet on staff so when he wanted to listen to music he didn't put on a CD. He called in the quartet.

Today's accomplishments: grocery shopping (for travel supplies and enough stuff to get me through this week), cleaned the air fryer, washed dishes, wiped down outside the appliances, cleaned the microwave, tidied and dusted the bedroom. House is looking better.

I just had to intervene in a cat fight. I was in my kitchen and heard a crying/yowling type sound, looked out the window and saw two cats squaring off. They were still in the circling "you're so tough, why don't you hit me, huh?" phase and both fled when I opened the front door.

I'm trying to plan meals to use up fresh produce and anything I've already cooked before I travel to Texas for a week, and I might have overdone the cooking/produce shopping lately. I was getting in the last bit of farmer's market time, so I went overboard.

The BlueSky update I'd love to see is one that would allow you to mute reposts from certain people without muting or unfollowing those people and without blocking all reposts from everyone. There are people I follow whose posts I want to see but who can also get spammy with reposts.

My body is currently griping at me after yesterday's long walk and this morning's walk to and from church, plus many trips up and down to/from the choir loft and lots of standing to sing, processional and recessional. I get a workout on Sunday mornings. I need to find more comfortable shoes.

Last night I ended up watching Elio, the must recent Pixar movie. It was not up to their usual standards. They did manage to stick the landing of the dismount, but that came after they missed the beam and faceplanted at the beginning of the routine (to extend and torture a metaphor).

After walking all afternoon, my legs are tired, and it will be a good evening to curl up under the electric throw and watch a movie. So I need to start thinking now if I'm going to get to it before bedtime. I'm torn between wanting something new and wanting something familiar and comforting.

One of the reasons I moved here was because of the hiking opportunities, but I haven't managed to do much. There's a local hiking group I've been following on FB, and today I finally joined them for a walking tour of my town. I got my 10,000 steps today!

I watched the live-action How to Train Your Dragon, and I'd have to classify it as Mostly Harmless. There wasn't much point to remaking it as it didn't change/add anything to the animated version. If I hadn't seen the animated version, I'd have thought it was a fun, sweet fantasy movie.

I'm enjoying my usual Friday night activity of trying to decide on a movie to watch. I'll dither for a couple of hours and end up watching one episode of Community before I go to bed. Though I'm thinking of maybe checking out the live-action How To Train Your Dragon.

I finally visited the big "book fair" (it's a permanent store) about 30 miles away. Basically, imagine that section at the front of a big B&N with the bargain books (including a lot of recent remainders), calendars, puzzle books, journals, etc., and it fills 3 barns.

Day three of roofing next door, and they're at the pounding nails stage. Which I think justifies a road trip to the big bookstore about half an hour away, maybe a stop at the big produce stand nearby. No thinking is going to happen right now. I'll think better in my car.

When I opened the curtains in the den this morning, I saw that I had deer in my backyard. I've seen them running down the street, but never in the yard. They grazed a while, then they lay down and made themselves comfortable. I took some pictures that I'll have to upload, but they mostly blend in.

In addition to rewatching The Magicians, my current other rewatch is Community. That's my comfort viewing. It's basically about flawed human beings learning to be better people, but it's snarky and surreal enough to keep it from being too sappy.

One of the roofers working next door is singing his heart out, presumably along with music on headphones, since I can't hear the music. Bless his heart, he's enthusiastic, but he's very off-pitch, which makes my skin crawl. I'm going to have to play music to drown him out.

The neighbor's new metal roof looks really nice. I'll have to talk to him about it for when I replace my roof. I'm sure it's more expensive, but there are metal roofs in town on Victorian houses that are original to the houses, so they last. I wonder how it affects cell reception inside.

I've made a bunch of lists and I feel much more in control. There's something about writing down what needs to be done that makes it feel less overwhelming. It's concrete instead of a nebulous "I have so much to do!" feeling.

Now that I've decided to ease up on myself and spend the rest of the year getting a good foundation in place for going forward, internally and externally, I realize just how ridiculous my previous plans were.

I think we have aurora. People are posting great pictures on the town FB group, but to me the sky only looks slightly pink, and my phone doesn't have a night mode setting. It doesn't help that I have a huge hill to the north of me, which blocks the horizon.

After admitting to myself that my timeline was ridiculously unrealistic, I think I'm going to pause and do that reset I said I needed to add to my process. I still need to do thinking and research, and I can think while getting my house in order and getting ready for the holidays.

It's weird being in the very early stages of developing a new idea. It's based on an old situation, but the plot, characters, setting, etc., are all new and I'm still trying to figure out the details. It's all amorphous right now, with bits and pieces gradually taking shape.

There's been construction noise all day, and I finally looked out the window on the relevant side of the house to see that the house next door is getting a new roof/gutters. The workmen on the roof have hung their jackets on the tree branches hanging over the roof.

The white cat is lumbering/waddling more, so it's not just fluffy winter coat. I'm wondering if it's pregnant. It's been floofy for ages, but now the belly looks close to dragging. Though that could be the way it creeps across the deck. Or it's found more sources of food.

I've just realized how soon Thanksgiving is, and I'll be traveling to my parents' place in Texas sooner than that. I've reached the point of needing to figure out what to buy and cook so I don't have a lot of stuff going bad while I'm gone. No big grocery trips between now and then.

The ACA subsidy debacle puts people like me in a tricky situation. If you increase your income too much, suddenly you're on the hook for much more expensive insurance. You either have to keep your income low enough to still get subsidies or get it high enough to afford insurance.

Last night's hard freeze and today's wind mean most of my backyard trees are losing their leaves today. But I still have one tree that's entirely green and leafy. I don't know what it is. It's bare in my photos from March, so it may just be running late.

Convincing you to read my novel by the first sentence. Share yours if you want. This is the opening to my cozy cottagecore fantasy Tea and Empathy (no, this doesn't sound too cozy, but it gets better). shannaswendson.com/writing/tea-...

That clock that sets its time by some central signal has freaked out again. It's currently 10 hours ahead. Time zone and date are correct. I may leave it alone to see if it resets, unless it starts to bug me. I'm frequently looking at the temp on it because it's very cold outside.

I discovered that the CW app has the whole series of The Magicians. I missed the last season and a half when I got rid of cable, but now I don't remember anything so I'm starting over from the beginning. I've read all the books, but I only remember bits and pieces of those.

Yummy dinner tonight. I made some focaccia to go with some Olive Garden copycat zuppa toscana soup. Not that I was craving Olive Garden. I had some kale I needed to use up and I had some Italian sausage in the freezer, so I was looking for a recipe to use both.

Things seem to have escalated with the white cat. This morning I was on the phone with my mom (she had a sense that I was upset about something. I was reading the newspaper) when the cat came down the hill. It looked at the window, seemed to see me, and paused, then came to drink water.

I now have five 1/2 cup jars of apple butter canned. I could have done two more if I'd had the jars, as I have a 1 cup refrigerator dish full left over, so I guess I'll be eating apple butter on my toast for a while. I should probably invest in proper canning supplies instead of winging it.

I need to finish the apple butter today. I got it close to the texture I want yesterday, but there's still some liquid I need to boil down. I've never quite managed to get it just right in the past because I get impatient, and I'm determined to get it right this year.

I've decided that I'm going to let myself play with the new take on the old idea this week to see where it goes and if there's anything there. It's taking up enough brain space to make it difficult to work on anything else. Tomorrow will be the perfect day to sit under a blanket and think.

I was inspired by the cider festival yesterday to make my annual batch of apple butter today from the apples I bought at the farm stand last week. And guess who didn't check to see if she needed canning lids before Friday's grocery trip. I had one lid.

Something I realized yesterday when driving home and seeing the sun hitting the town and the mountains beyond just right was that I didn't know how depressed I was living in the Dallas area until I moved away. It was like I had a low-level cloud on me that I didn't know was there until it was gone.

In addition to finding a Christmas tree yesterday, I had an overall wonderful day. There was a cider festival at the Frontier Culture Museum, which made for a great outing with my annual pass. Ironically, I did not have any cider, as I was driving and I'm a lightweight.

Never! The thinking is my favorite part of writing, so why would I outsource that just to get a mash of what other people have already done (since it was stolen from them)? I keep seeing people talk about using it to get ideas, and I'm baffled.

I found a Christmas tree today -- artificial, and it won't actually go up until after Thanksgiving, but last year when I started looking after Thanksgiving there was nothing left. For this year, I'm trying a small one I can fit on a plant stand in the living room.