Welcome, M!, #21 Done!

My boss finally had her baby last night, bringing little M into the world a week an a half past her expected date of arrival. Kid's already a stubborn one. Mom and baby are doing well.

Saturday we came to a price agreement on the house and as of yesterday the contract's complete. Hubby's gonna make some phone calls inquiring about loans today. We're looking into at least one credit union and one other source we have a connection with, as we've been advised to try and avoid dealing with big banks. We'll do it as a last resort as that's where we got preapproved, but it's not a requirement.

Two more books checked off - A Dog Called Demolition and Arthur C. Clarke's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Honestly, I did not like the first one. There was an overarching plot that sounded interesting to me, but it was split up by several completely random short stories that at the end had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. No matching characters or anything. They never appeared again. I spent the entire time thinking "okay, so where is this guy going to show up again? Why did you bring this person to my attention? What's his purpose in this book" and it never amounted to anything. Why waste my time with those chapters? And every chapter started with a random poem of the author's creation. The flow was completely ruined. The book was just too disjointed and broken up to enjoy. 2001 was a much better read. I've never seen the movie, but I know all the references associated with it (HAL9000, "I can't let you do that Dave", "My god, it's full of stars", the monoliths...) so I enjoyed being able to piece all of these things together finally. I started on 2010: Space Odyssey Two but it's on break for a bit while I reread How Not To Write A Novel in preparation for editing.

So I think I said I was going to start editing on Monday? Well, I opened my novel and...choked. Froze up. Couldn't bring myself to even read a word. I'm hoping rereading HNTWAN will help me with that, giving me some ideas of what to look for in editing, and so far, it has. We'll see how much actually applies and needs fixing, but it's giving me a place to start, and really, that's what I need.

Oh, also, I finished #21 this weekend, making my 25th dish not in a cookbook (a creamy tomato penne that ended up a little gritty.) I'm going to keep making things, I've got a cooking blog to keep up with and about 200 recipes I want to try on Pinterest, but it's time for me to start working on my cookbook collection.