A considerably more low-key week and weekend than last, but also very profitable. The big news (for me, anyway) is that I finished a piece of writing I started a couple of weeks back. This is the first bit of fanfic I've worked on since my Dan Palmer story in 2015; it's been a long dry spell and one that's left me depressed even if I hadn't let on it was happening. Now I have to go back and put all the details into it; I hadn't written any fiction at all in so long that I figured I'd just better get the bones down first and do the rest later. I know I'll be tweaking this one for weeks to get the voices just right.

 

(Plus I finally reviewed my September books, which is a relief.)

Still having strange gastric upsets every so often; this iteration seems to be since I got the third vaccine. Alas, my digestion has been troublesome for over twenty years; I doubt it's going to get any better as I get older.

Besides the usual weekly things (chores on Sunday, shopping on Thursday) we had a stop at the shopping center out on Dallas Highway that has Petco and Sprouts because Snowy was almost out of birdseed. Found the budgie enclosure full of a dozen baby budgies, some with head tucked under wing, a couple playing, several looking askance at this vertical living thing with the horizontal covering over the head. These days every time I go past the budgies, I always pray that each will find a loving home with someone who cares for them and understands they are little "bird persons" and not just toys to be stuck in a corner.

Saturday was Hair Day—we had to skip last month because Sheri had badly injured her ankle—and James finally looks neatly bewhiskered again, rather than looking like a refugee from Duck Dynasty. I trimmed the hair on his neck and around his ears a couple of weeks earlier (before Jessie's wedding), but I really don't have Sheri's chops in hair cutting. From there we drove up to Town Center to the DXL store because James needed a decent winter jacket; his old plaid with the hood, which he likes best, even over the "Rhode Island-weight" winter coat we got him in 2005, was on its last legs, as I had mended and patched it where it got mangled in front by one of the clasps on his koala bag. Since I am not a seamstress by any means and this involved patching plaid, it didn't look very good any longer, even if it did keep him warm. We found a very nice black jacket with a hood and a quilted interior for $90; as a plus it is also water-resistant, which the old jacket wasn't, so he has a good raincoat as well.