Happy Birthday to M and E!!!! Those of you who know their DA identities, send them some birthday greetings.

Life has been going well lately. I got a day off today, mostly as a result of working Sunday. But still, a day off is a day off. Today all I've done is catch up with all the things I can't do when I am working, which is a lot of stuff. In between times I have been working on various clay projects. I made two Bottles of Hope for the SDPCG meeting last night! One was of a hot-air balloon with a little purple dragon in it, blowing flame upward to keep the balloon aloft. The other was a sea-scape. And I made two beads for the SDPCG Bead Strand. This is an annual affair. We get as many members of the Guild as possible to make two beads, set up two identical bead strands, raffle one off to the folks who contributed it, and keep the other as an official record of the talents of the Guild. It is usually shown off when we do our demonstrations at the Del Mar Fair in the summer.

I didn't have time to get pictures of any of this, but I will definitely try to get a picture of the Bead Strand during the Holiday Party. The beads I made were steampunk-inspired, and I was really pleased how they turned out. I can't wait to see the whole strand!

Lately I have been reading -- or actually, just finished -- the Cecelia/Kate magical series by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevener (Sorcery and Cecelia, The Grand Tour, and Mislaid Magician). It's loads of fun! Set in the era just after the Napoleonic Wars and just before Queen Victoria's reign, it is an England with the Industrial Revolution -- AND Magic!!! It is told as correspondence between Kate and Cecelia, and is loads of fun. That style of writing can work really well if it is done properly -- Bram Stoker's Dracula was done entirely as a series of letters and newspaper reports, and it is still creepy as hell!

I'd love to have the time to do something like that someday. One intriguing and challenging fact about that style of story is that you have to write it in an era when, at the very least, Post Offices exist! And, while there were certainly messages sent frequently even during ancient times, it was almost exclusively government-related. As my husband put it, much more like ARPANET rather than the internet.

Well, enough silliness for how. Gotta go back to work tomorrow. Just poking my head up to let everyone know all is well!