Prepped two stories to mail and followed up on three old submissions, including the one that’s been at Adventures of Sword & Sorcery since January 2000. (Yes, I’m stubborn. And yes, as a matter of fact, I’ve been submitting it elsewhere and assume AS&S is a dead market. But I’m stubborn.) We’ve also been housecleaning.

Eventually we both showered, and Ken put the intercom wires in his motorcycle helmet, and I read another magazine in a vain attempt to catch up on the piles of ‘em. In late afternoon, our friends Morgana and Brian showed up, and regaled us with tales of Festival of the Rose, making me wish again that we’d gone, even though I’m really happy with all that we accomplished yesterday. We all went out to Old World Village, a place I didn’t even know existed! Mostly shops and German restaurants, all in medievalish façades. And ten minutes from home! The Ren Faire/LotR pub they’d been to in the past was no longer there, so we went to a German restaurant. I had—well damn, now I’ve forgotten. Thin beef wrapped in bacon, with spreitzen (? the noodle-y/pasta-y stuff). Very tasty, but also very salty. I brought a bit home for breakfast tomorrow. Afterwards, we came back here, but they left soon thereafter, having to go all the way home to Oxnard. Absolutely lovely to see them, though. Ken and I spent the rest of the evening watching “Charmed” and “Angel” and finishing up some tax paperwork for the UK.

Overall, it’s been a good day and a good weekend. I feel ready to hit the ground running tomorrow. I got an e-mail from Lazette (one of the moderators at Forward Motion, with whom I’ve chatted before) encouraging me to sign up for the Dares. That’s what I get for telling people where my journal is! Well, I might as well go for it—the worst I can do is panic and hide.