What a busy, hellish month for work. Forty-five hours in overtime during the last four weeks. Some of the days were long ones. I could only tell myself the money would be good for the old savings account and used during the seasonal lay-off. And that's only four and a half weeks away!

The inertia has set in hard writing-wise. I'll need to get back into writing before the lay-off, too. I'm going to the Surrey Writers Conference the third week in October and I want to at least have three chapters and pitch for the next novel.

I called my mom in Mesa, AZ today and told her Ximena and I will be down there for World Fantasy at the end of October. I'm planning on an extended stay to visit my mom and introduce Ximena. Coincidentally, my mom has a "friend" as she calls him, a man named Curt and they've been in a relationship for about a year. My dad had died back in '91 and shortly after that my mom moved from Minnesota to Arizona. She has had "friends" over the years, but I gues she feels good about this Curt and, in fact, reminds her of my dad. So this is nice and I guess Curt will be in Mesa when we'll be down there, so I'll get to meet him too.

Moving the subject back to work, the weeks will have nomal hours and consistant here on out. I do so much better when I work only 8 hours and get home at a decent time. Everytime I work overtime and at different times on different days, I get discombobulated. My discipline suffers, my writing suffers. I hope for smooth sailing for this last month of full time work. And I'll update more.