Fifteen minutes ago, great big fluffy snow was falling outside in a near-blizzard. Now it's bright and sunny, all the snow has vanished, and I can see little yellow flowers on the lawn outside. The weather has been darned weird lately.

I'm home again. Bah. Yesterday I got ready for work and managed to just make it to the bus stop before I collapsed, totally woozy and nauseous. So, back to the doctor, who signed me off another week of work... I am really, really tired of this.

The up-side is that I got to be with Patrick yesterday on his birthday, although since I was lying on the couch all day, and he'd caught a nasty stomach bug (so couldn't eat anything richer than plain cooked pasta), it was a little less fabulously celebratory than we'd usually like. We're planning to make birthday cake, etc., later in the week, as soon as one of us is up to it.

I spent this morning looking up historical Croatian maps, as research for a short story, which led into general Croatian info-surfing, on my own behalf...Being Croatian has always felt like such a major part of my identity that it's horrifying to realize how little I really know about Croatia itself or its history. I've always wanted to go (especially after Austrian colleagues in Vienna told me that Croatia has the best, whitest swimming beaches and warmest ocean water in Europe, as well as the cheapest hotels), but recent events have made it feel suddenly much more urgent to me. Patrick and I are really hoping we'll be able to make it to Croatia this August, to swim in the Adriatic, explore old castles, and see the town where my family came from (if there's anything left of it after the various horrors of the mid-to-late 20th century--unfortunately, some of the worst of them took place there).

I also found out this morning that I really should have posted in my profile a month ago to the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award profile page...Due to a late change in the eligibility rules, I found out I was eligible about a week before the nominations were due in last year (along with the rest of the Hugo award nominations), so I didn't get a profile up in time for that, and the same thing may well happen again this year. Oh well. It was kind of fun anyway just to come up with a profile this morning, which I dutifully sent off with a "what the heck" feeling...

Now I'm listening to Hedningarna's Karelia Visa CD (mmmm, so good!), looking forward to watching Elizabethtown on Amazon rental DVD tonight, and fantasizing about swimming in warm ocean water...