Hark, the Santa Anas have arrived.

Actually, they might not be the Santa Anas. They might just be high winds — I’m not sure what the cutoff is. But I’m calling them Santa Anas anyway, because they are fierce. I woke up to the screen door banging around and the trees in the courtyard being thrashed within an inch of their lives.

The Santa Anas are an allergy sufferer’s nightmare, by the way.

I shut off my alarm to sleep more (had to continue my dream: I had a misadventure in a three-story Barnes & Noble with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Except he’d decided the whole Jedi thing was crap and joined a biker gang and gotten tattoos. Kind of awesome.) So I am now slouched in front of the computer, pounding coffee and waiting for my Zyrtec to kick in.

Juno is making a valiant effort to make me feel better, turning in my direction and wolf whistling. It’s quite darling, That reminds me, I need to get her some new toys at some point. Maybe not today. Today I have to try to turn in my rent check, as I think the office is closed on Sundays, but that is the only time I’m setting foot outside.

I submitted my “test assignment” for the place I’d forgotten I’d applied to. I did get paid a small fee for it, so we’ll see if anything ends up coming of it. My heart is more in writing than editing, so it would be nice to pick up more writing gigs, but most of my professional work is in editing, and as I’ve said before, my motorcycle clippings are only going to get me so far. I’ve been brainstorming other clippings — stuff I can “write for fun” that might show off more than my ability to talk about engines. I wrote a sample blog entry for one place called “Breakups for Jesus” (in 2006, I was dumped in a text message…for the Lord). They didn’t want it, but I bet I can polish it and try to place it somewhere, or at least use it as a sample.

Hit a tough spot on the zombie story. I’m going to have to do some brainstorming to get past it. Thing is, I know exactly why it’s a tough spot — when I originally wrote the story, the secondary antagonist was the narrator’s ex-boyfriend, presumed dead in the end of the world. Surprise! He wasn’t. He lived, made friends with Powerful Folk, and ended up screwing the lot of them.

This worked, to a point, except in the rewrite it occurred to me that the lead is not a stupid girl, and while her ex is naive and prone to doing stupid things, he’s not an idiot. She wouldn’t be with an idiot. So I ended up restructuring him a little bit, and now…he’s turning into more of an ally to them than he was initially written. He’ll probably still screw them over, but I’m taking a different path to get there. Thus, the original plotline (which was admittedly written in a rush and kind of fell into typical post-apocalyptic gladiatorial fare) doesn’t quite work.

I…must brainstorm.

Bleck. Caved in and took Excedrin for the headache. Not sure how Excedrin and Zyrtec mix, but if everything works out, I should be feeling great in about an hour. Juno, meanwhile, is sitting on my shoulder whistling her heart out. Her latest tune is a mashup of “Taps” and the Indiana Jones theme. At some point I need to get cracking and teach her some metal tunes.

Oh, now she’s crooning the Imperial March and wants cuddles. Truly, this is the perfect bird.