Kettle corn.

Tessa on the air conditioner.

Bucket on the floor.

I said I wanted a new desk chair, because I’m boring. Also, because I spend a large amount of time sitting in it, and the one I had lacked any real back support.

Somehow that turned into maybe also getting a new desk. So we had a planned before-birthday excursion to IKEA to spin around in chairs and see if any of their desks would fit the studio.

And the day before said excursion, my iMac decided to be cranky to the point of being worrisome, especially considering it’s my primary writing computer and no longer covered by AppleCare.

So, even though my birthday is not until Thursday, I have a brand new home office.

Old version:

Apologies for the glare. This was, I believe, my dad’s desk from high school, painted over several times.

New version:

We actually found an IKEA desk that fit perfectly, including a shelf that runs along the back of the drawers that collects all the cords and protects them from cord-gnawing kittens. My new chair is fabulous, and I cannot even tell you how shiny & wonderful the new iMac is, it’s amazing what only a few years difference in technology makes. I keep scrolling on any screen that will scroll just because the mouse has touch-screen-esque scrolling.

So happy happy early birthday to me, especially since I’m going to be glued to this spot for the foreseeable future.

We moved the old desk out into the hall for now. It has been claimed already.

Painting.

Kittens in boxes.

Had a weekend that include lots of reading and lots of food. Made blueberry pomegranate sangria. Got chocolate cayenne ice cream when we went out for dinner. Took a handful of photos on the way home, including the twilight church bell above with the fantastical purple sky.

Finished reading Ash & The Book Thief, so apparently the reading section of my brain is no longer broken. And today I have a new box of books, after shenanigans on Saturday with lying USPS tracking.

Am particularly excited because this box had this in it:

No, not Tessa. I’ve wanted to read Lisa Brackmann’s Rock Paper Tiger ever since Nathan Bransford posted the gorgeous cover on his blog ages ago, and that was before I realized I actually knew Lisa from Absolute Write, so needless to say I am extra special excited to finally have it, even if it’s already covered in kitty fuzz.

Tessa, of course, prefers the box.

Obviously.

It was a gorgeous day for it, sunny but not hot. We saw lots of adorable dogs and almost ran over a great many cyclists. Also, there were very loud geese.

We walked around the Old North Bridge area for awhile, and then went over to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, so now I have my own photos of the graves from Author’s Ridge that are more or less exactly the same as the ones from the Wikipedia entry. (Apparently they forgot Hawthorne, just like I did.)

There are more photos on my Flickr photostream. And I have a new photo of me up on my about page, too, so that’s actually up-to-date for a change.

It’s an odd sort of day when you find yourself standing on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s grave. Good, but odd.

Not really knowing what to do with myself now that I am out of Revisionland for the moment, I thought I would bake muffins. But then I couldn’t find poppy seeds and I really, really wanted lemon poppy muffins. So while I wandered dejected and sad-faced through Whole Foods, the boy & I stumbled upon a tower of bundt cakes, and one of them was lemon with this lovely drippy icing and white chocolate shavings on top and we decided it was like muffins, but better.

So we pretty much ate lemon bundt cake all weekend in the sunshine.

It was really good. Likely better than any thwarted muffin attempt.

While I had the camera out I tried to take photos of Tessa, and while she is usually a very photogenic kitten she was not particularly obliging this time.

I set this photo as the wallpaper on the iMac and I keep laughing maniacally at it. I think this was actually mid-tail-lick rather than proper yawn.

I spent the cake-less, kitten-less hours of the weekend reading and cleaning the studio while the boy read the new revisions. Other than some minor things that still need tweaking, he really likes the major changes so that’s good. He’s read like, every incarnation of this thing and he’s a Virgo so I’m going to take that as a sign that I’m on the right track. Still have it out with other beta readers, so I’m going to try not to obsess over it while I wait and actually get other, non-revising things done for a change.

Also, my windows are open and it is sunshiny and that is happy-making.

Normally she is an equinox baby, but this year the equinox was yesterday. Maybe that’s why she was so cranky about letting me take birthday photos.

I tried. I did. She would not look at the camera no matter how I pleaded and waved things. I think she was shunning me because I brushed her first.

Ah well. She is not as much of a camera lover as her sister, but she’s still a pretty princess.

Happy Birthday, fluffiest of Fluffy Buckets!

• Finished knitting the huge, boa-esque scarf that I have been working on for ages. Photos forthcoming. Of course, now that it is finished it is too warm outside to wear it. I have lousy knitting karma.
• Read Shaun Tan’s Tales From Outer Suburbia on recommendation from Carey. I was a Tan fan already but this book is lovely bits of whimsical wonderment and I loved it to pieces. A perfect blend of words & pictures. This is going to be one of those books I read over & over, I can tell.
• Managed to get a whole lot of revising done, including reworking a large part of the ending. I came up with the changes while completely hopped up on Sudafed and unable to breathe properly, but so far they still seem to work. Draft is still a mess, but it’s starting to look novel-shaped again. Sort of. If you squint.
• Did not manage to properly get rid of this stupid cold. Am mostly better, but still congested. It is the cold that will not die no matter how much tea and vitamin C I give it. It makes me sad. *cough*

In other news, it’s disturbingly spring-like here. We had the windows open yesterday. It kind of freaked me out.

Tessa is enjoying the sunshine.

And then I realized since it’s app-based I can’t really do anything useful on it and would be deprived of my beloved Scrivener. So I am going to have to ignore the shiny for now. Someone call me when it runs OS X.

In better news, I tested USPS requested package pickup today and it seems to have worked just fine, so I now have an alternative to walking to the post office in the snow when I have something larger than print envelope sized to mail.

And we are rolling toward the end of our epic LOST re-watch. Season 5 is a lot more, um, inconsistent than I’d remembered. Still good, just missing something. But I know the finale will make me cry again, so maybe I’ll forgive the inconsistencies in a few days.

Still in revisionland, of course. I’m not sure I’m going to have a finished(ish) draft by as early in February as I’d wanted, but it’s starting to look novel-shaped again, which is something. It still needs massive amounts of work but the structure is getting there and that’s making my brain hurt marginally less.

Bucket, as always, remains unimpressed.

So yesterday I tweeted that I should just blog about my shoes, especially since I have new ones, and people (well, Liz & Rachel, who as far as I know do count as people) seemed to think that was a good idea.

So this post is all about my shoes. Specifically, all about my Fluevogs. If you have no interest in shoes or photos of shoes, I suggest you stop reading now. Though there is a kitten included in the photos, because I live with needy kittens.

Only the shoe people left and maybe some kitten fans? Good.

I have a confession to make, first, though.

I am not a shoe person.

I have never been a shoe person. I am thinking about the history of my life in shoes and can come up with nothing more than a few pairs of well-worn Doc Martens and a vague recollection that I had to wear brown shoes with my high school uniform, and I cannot recall what a single pair of those brown shoes looked like. I have never particularly cared much about my footwear.

And then a few years ago I started developing a fondness for shoes. Particularly boots, but shoes in general. I have big feet, so I never particularly cared for shoe shopping, and I can’t walk in thin or high heels so that always eliminated most of my choices. But probably due to the wonder of the internet I’ve been able to find more shoes that fit my style and my feet.

Today I will be featuring my Fluevogs, since I just got a new pair yesterday.

I discovered Fluevogs several years ago, likely via the BPAL forum, and figured I would pretty much never be able to afford them. I got one pair on clearance that the boy later inherited because they looked better on him. (No photo, they’re Angel Michaels. Just pretend the red bit is white.)

But now between gifts and savvy sale shopping I have three pairs and the boy has two.

These are the Fellowship Kathy Mary Janes that arrived yesterday. Tessa had to be in the photo because she’s a camerawhore.

They’re adorable and don’t seem to need much breaking in other than a teensy bit in the toes. I wanted a shoe that could be dressed up or down that didn’t have much of a heel and these seem like they’ll be perfect. No, I did not pay $239 for them. Google is my friend.

I love the Fellowship family, because of the heels. They’re big & low but but nicely streamlined, and the shoes are so fitted that they don’t look clunky.

These are my other Fellowships, the Jenna boots:

Please excuse my rolled up jeans. I learned today that it is very difficult to take photos of your own shoes. This one was actually accomplished by aiming my camera down into my full length mirror. I flipped it in PhotoShop because the backwards “f” on the heel (that you can’t even see) was making me neurotic.

I love these boots. They are comfy and fabulous. I’d thought the buckles would annoy me but they don’t, and even if they did they’re removable.

And last but certainly not least are my beloved Bellevue Libby Smiths:

Y’all should know by now that I’m a sucker for Victoriana, and one of my very favorite color schemes is black & white with a touch of red, so the buttons killed me and I kind of had to have these the second I saw them. I left them on after I took these photos, because I don’t have enough opportunities to wear them.

The whole Bellevue family is gorgeous, too, and the heel is actually sturdy enough for me to manage, which is brilliant because if these boots hadn’t worked on me I seriously would have cried.

And Fluevog is tormenting me now, because they tweeted a sneaky preview of these forthcoming Bellevues:

I’m kind of going to have to get those, too. I should start saving my pennies now.