Arrival in Orlando

I've never been to Florida before.

Although I'm physically here, I haven't done anything yet. Took a cab from the airport to the hotel. Orlando from the air at night, btw, is incredibly beautiful. I love the scent in the air. And though it's a 'cold' night (59˚F) it feels warm to me.

Bear in mind that the average temperature in the heated part of the house is about 60˚, varying between 54 and 68. Downstairs ... yeah. My fingers go numb when I'm typing on the computer downstairs.

So I'm sure that while everyone in Florida will be bundled up against the cold snap, I'll be in shorts.

I'm so tired I'm itchy. My internal clock should be telling me that it's a bit after 10pm, but it's past 1am here and I feel like that's the more accurate time. That's probably a good thing.

Sadly, won't be sleeping in tomorrow. Having said that, I'm all kinds of excited to be here. Right now I want to sleep in, but I betcha I'll wake up tomorrow wanting to dash out the door to spend time with friends I haven't seen in years and years and to see the palm trees by daylight and see real, actual, golden and warm sunlight. Feel it on my skin. Taste it in the air.

It's going to be a beautiful day.

Reviews

I love getting reviews, even ones that make me feel about the size of a flea, and about as wanted. That feeling passes after the initial owie. This round, at least so far, has me feeling more around elephant-sized.

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet recently came out with #28, which includes "Neighbors" written under my actual name, and a few reviews came back about it.

A nice mention here.

This reader also enjoyed "Neighbors," as well as the other fine stories in this issue.

Locus mentioned the issue, and tried to capture the sorts of stories you can find in LCRW, and gave a brief overview of each with a few opinions thrown in.

If Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet sounds like fun, you can get individual issues at their website. Warning. May be addictive.

I'm glad they're offering the ebook versions. Those older issues, as far as the general public are concerned, aren't available unless you happen to find them on ebay or something. These magazines are especially attractive to people who like a boutique feeling to the things they like to have around and with them.

Bad Phone Company, No Bone for You

It appears that we won't be entering the 21st century for at least another week.

Sadness!

Much as I love visiting the library, I'm more than a little irritated. The phone company didn't call and let me know there was a change of schedule. I'm glad I had the day off anyway, as I was able to attend a very informative class on small business tax law for my state, but half the reason I decided to take the day off was to make sure I would be home for the installation. And I had a ton of things I could have done in the morning instead of waiting for the crew, such as grocery shopping and picking up a load of hay, straw, oyster shells, and two loads of landscaping material. The place closes at four--I'm not going to get home and back in time to get that done. Drat and drat.

The day they rescheduled us for without consulting us as to whether we'd actually be there just happened to be, by pure unadulterated luck, a day that R. would be home, otherwise we'd have to reschedule their unannounced rescheduling for sometime in March.

I feel like I'm five years old again and a week is for-ev-er! I've already waited over a week. Whine!

Sometimes patience is hard. I'm all about patience when I'm fishing. Waiting for internet service, it seems, not so much.

But I've been waiting for two years, so I guess I'll just have to put my big girl panties on and tuck in that lower lip. But not before one last hmph.

Hmph.

We're Entering the 21st Century!

You're never going to believe this ....

We're going to get set up with high speed internet at the house.

They better buy winter jackets down below, is all I'm saying.

No, the wonderful optical cable they laid right past our front door is not live. And although we are digital call capable (whatever that means) they can't (won't?) pipe internet through there. In the end, we went with an affordable thingy through our phone company. At least, it's as or more affordable than satellite we've looked into in the past. And yes, satellite is not nearly as awesome or fast as optical cable, but it's going to be a lot faster than anything we have at home at the moment.

I'm sure I'll still hop on down to the library to use the Wifi there. I love the library, and the connection will be faster than it is at home. The big difference will be that I'll be able to post blog entries from home (yay! -- we still haven't figured out what the problem is with the sign-in from home, boo) which means I'll be posting more often. And when I finish a project at home, I won't have to wait until the library is open, or cave and go to my favorite Wifi-enabled pub and eat eat eat for four hours while I get my stuff done.

Once we're live I'll get a wifi router and ... I can hardly contain my excitement ... I won't have to relocate when I'm ready to publish a book or send out an email with a big attachment (or make the attachment so tiny it's useless.) This will modestly increase my productivity, and lower gas and eating-out expenditures. Hard to say whether we'll come out ahead yet, but we'll see.