apartment hunting progress report; on reading How Much for Just the Planet?

My mom came up to visit last night. Today we had breakfast at Friendly's, drove around town looking at apartments, and also stopped by the Ithaca Festival for lunch. Alas, the really good apartment (by far the largest and also the cheapest) was stolen out from under me by someone else -- she had apparently looked at it the day before but not committed, which was why the owner was still showing it, but she came back this afternoon and signed the lease. *pouts*

Of the other two places I saw today, one is no good. It's far too expensive for not nearly enough value -- the owner is a (personable) nickle-and-dime skinflint who makes tenants pay not just gas and electricity, but also the water bills, after already charging over $900 a month! I have never heard of a landlord in this town who didn't include water in the rent. *shakes head*

The third place is a little smaller and more expensive than I like, and I would have to pay full price for my own internet, but if the places I am scheduled to see Monday morning don't work, I will call the owner and see if it's still available. *sigh*

Mom and I boxed up all my nonfiction, comics, and manga, as well as my tiny DVD collection and a bunch of my infrequently worn clothes. I will continue to pack and sort through my stuff, since that needs to be done no matter where I end up moving.

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On a completely different subject, I am three chapters into John M. Ford's How Much for Just the Planet?, and I can't stop laughing. It's brilliant, but thoroughly mad, and I am amazed Ford got away with writing this. I can't believe Paramount let it be published.

This is the sort of divine madness you lose when you insist on forcing all your tie-in novels into a shared continuity instead of essentially sanctioning certain pieces of fanfiction.

Ah well. You win some, you lose some.

writing progress report

The hell with Star Trek. I just wrote another 600 words of "Secrets" and managed to both send Xanthe off and get Professor Sprout to bring Hagrid up naturally in conversation. Now I just need to bring him onstage so Ginny can talk to him.

...And then the remaining scenes, of course, but once I get past Hagrid I can go back to Apple and Daphne and at least temporarily avoid the intense ethical philosophy I've been mired in for the past month. Also, unlike Xanthe (who, while a vivid character in my mind, has an unfortunate tendency to become a plot device in practice), Daphne's life does not revolve around Ginny. Which is nice.

I like Daphne. I like her even better when she's doing a comedy double-act with Apple, which has fallen by the wayside since early chapters of "Secrets." (That is perfectly reasonable, since neither cousin is in a terribly playful mood around Ginny after she starts the fight with Daphne, but it's kind of sad.) One of these days, I really must get around to finishing "The Dragon Debacle," which is my sidestory explaining the mischief Apple and Daphne got up to in Romania the summer before "Secrets."