Happy New Year to all! Sorry I'm late with that tiding. And um, others that have already passed. happy those tidings too.

New Year's was great. Alan and Kristin came down from his folks place in Erie, Pa, and Elad flew in a couple of days previous from San Francisco. I took them to the Nyabinghi for crapaoke, which was the most fun New Year's I've had in a long long time. People at crapaoke sing their songs badly or silly, for the most part, and many of the songs are eighties songs. It's an anti-pop event, bordering on punk posturing. Lovely, lovely.

Elad is still here and will be leaving in a few days. We're watching hella movies and took a trip to Pittsburgh today to the Carnegie Museum of Art and also to the Museum of Natural History. Dinosaurs are good. Yum.

The highlight of the New Year has been finishing my novel, just yesterday morning. Well, the first draft of it anyway. Sigh. Big disorienting last twenty-four hours. I've never ran a gauntlet like that before, and I'm exhausted but happy. I'm letting it sit now for a few weeks before going back in for my own initial rewrites, and then I'll be needing to ask some people to read it so I can get even more perspective on it for a second round of rewrites. It's so much damned work, these novel thingies.

I'm off again. Hope everyone is doing great!