greetings from New Jersey!

I accidentally set my alarm for 10:45am rather than 9:45am yesterday, and didn't notice until I was out of the shower and it was already 11 o'clock, which meant that in the best case scenario, I wouldn't be able to get to church until 11:25, at which point there would only be twenty minutes of Sunday school left... so I just gave up and didn't go. I feel like such a dumbass, but sometimes these things happen. And Vicky showed up at 11:30ish (having driven down from Rochester, where she'd attended a friend's wedding on Saturday), so the net result was that we left for NJ slightly earlier than we otherwise would have, after I put out the trash and recycling and whatnot. *shrug* We made decent time and had no traffic problems until nearly the end of the trip, at which point we bailed off I-80 onto NJ-10 to avoid complications from an accident near exit 34. (I like electronic message boards that warn of upcoming problems like that!)

Anyway, we are safely at our parents' house in Madison. Last night we had Chinese takeout, tonight we will have beef stew, and I think tomorrow is steak with bacon. Thus far my main contribution to family affairs has been to wrap Dad's presents for Mom, because he is madly busy trying to get the mass spectrometry encyclopedia finished -- any articles they don't have sent in for page-setting and copy-editing and so on within the next two weeks won't get into the book, the end. They have all the technical articles done, but they are still running behind on the biographies, alas.

Now I am going to go grab some leftovers for lunch and then get back to work on Yuletide. As I think I said, I chopped off the opening scene of my planned story, because it can stand alone and is over the minimum wordcount, but it works better with the rest of the story that follows, so I am plugging away trying to get the rest of the scenes finished. We shall see if I make the deadline.

...And then I have to write my Ladystuck story. *headdesk* Yeah, I fail time management forever. Which is not a surprise to anyone. *sigh*

brief Yuletide progress update

The long version of my Yuletide story is maybe... two scenes away from completion? The evil scene I was looking forward to seems to have fallen out the story entirely, as its timeframe has shrunk, but oh well, whatever. I also think I have a title, so that's good.

We are leaving for the Christmas Eve service in about ten minutes, after which we will get lost in Chatham looking at Xmas lights (as is traditional -- both the lights and the lost), and after that I have agreed to walk my parents' dog, so I am unsure if I will be able to finish before the archive closes. :-/

But even so, I will post it as a Madness treat or a New Year's Resolution story, so one way or another my recipient will get this fic!

And now I am off like a prom dress, as my coworker AO would say. :-)

(P.S. I seem to have TWO Yuletide presents of my own! This is a very exciting feeling!)