New River pictures! His second follow-up appointment went great. The doctor says his eyes look fantastic, and maybe he won't need any more surgeries for a while. (We'll know better when he has his next appointment to check the eye pressure under anesthesia, in six weeks or so.)

Cool thing: Late last night via SF Awards Watch I discovered that "Impossible Dreams" is a Seiun Award finalist. (That's the Japanese equivalent of the Hugos.) A nice surprise!

Last week I got a bug up my ass (um, metaphorically) to finish my book, and dove in this weekend. I figured I had about 20,000 words to go... and I wrote around 14,000 of them this weekend. All that's left is climax and coda, and there are only five scenes (four short, one long) between me and The End. I could've finished the novel yesterday, but I wouldn't have had much fun, and decided my time was better spent taking a walk with my wife and son, playing some games, and watching TV. Net result: I'm cheerful and well-rested, and I'll finish my novel off in the next day or two.

Once it's done, I'll work on a proposal I promised my agent and write a story I promised an editor. In a couple of weeks, I'll give the book a read-through, fix any big screw-ups, clean up the prose, and send it off to its fate in the hands of my editor by the first of May. It's so nice to see the end of this book rapidly approaching. This has been a much harder novel-writing experience than usual, not so much because of the novel itself, but because of all the life stuff that came up during the course of the writing.

But, hey. Our old landlord just gave us back our security deposit (with no deductions, and he even paid us interest); thus I'm no longer so poor I'm rolling pennies for gas money, which improves my outlook greatly.

Why, we might even be able to order in food for dinner tonight! Which we haven't done yet at our new place, due to shortness of cash. Though, in truth, I've enjoyed doing so much cooking, poverty-driven though it was. I made gumbo again last week, and a couple of yummy batches of cornbread, and last night I made chicken katsudon, which I've made once or twice before, but never so successfully. Life is pretty good.