Random and brief.

We so need to get the pictures from our trip to Canada developed. Niagara Falls is a beautiful natural wonder. You don’t really appreciate the power of that much water succumbing to gravity until you’re standing at the prow of a boat with white water roiling beneath you, spray churning around you, and the heavy roar of millions of gallons falling down towards you, glittering with a thousand tiny rainbows.

I’m on another new laptop – an early Christmas present from Hikaru. I’ve destroyed yet another one; my Dell just went belly-up last week, and I had a hell of a time recovering any data that wasn’t in my last backup. The new laptop is spiffy and sweet, and Hikaru is the most wonderful boyfriend ever for getting it for me. Now if only the touchpad wasn’t an off-brand rather than a Synaptics, as the drivers don’t include touchpad controls, I can’t turn off tap-to-click, and I’m going batsnot bonkers with my clumsy hands making it do a thousand things I really don’t want it to do. On the plus side, I’m exercising my creativity coming up with inventive new ways to curse the damned thing.

I’ve applied for a few editorial jobs, just supplemental income for my daily writing work, though a couple are full-time (so the writing would end up being my side work I’d do in off-hours). The full-time ones are actual office jobs, which gives me a little quake of fear. I haven’t done the office thing in years, and I’ll admit: I have a slight phobia of leaving the house for too long after my robbery-at-gunpoint incident, and especially of going places alone. But I think I can handle it, and it’d be good for me. Wish me luck that I get called in for an interview.

I need to update my “on the shelf” thing in the sidebar. I finished ELS ages ago, and it was a lovely book – well-written, imaginative, with wonderful characters and an amazing world. I’m currently reading The Evolution of God by Robert Wright; it makes me think of Sujit, oddly (only Sihaya will get that, I think).

Also, next month they announce the winners of the Esquire contest. I’m allowed to hope, right?