San Diego is apparently the second-least allergenic city in the country. I am not sure who came up with that figure; Mother read it somewhere this morning. I promptly laughed and popped my Zyrtec. There’s many things I like about visiting my parents in SD; the open area, the breeze, the amount of light the house’s many windows let in, my wildly entertaining family.

Waking up with a nasty sinus headache is not one of the things I enjoy about this place. I think some of it is due to the dog; I’m not allergic to her, per se, but she’s got all kinds of fluff and dander and it gets in the air and leads to further nasal aggravation. I actually tend to do better in OC with just the bird.

Had a lovely post-birthday dinner at the 94th Aero Squadron Restaurant. I went for the sirloin (you only turn 28 once) and had a couple glasses of wine. Oh, and the beer-cheese soup. Shall we discuss the beer-cheese soup? It may be the greatest invention of all time. I think I could live off beer-cheese soup and be very happy (and probably 200 pounds heavier…also, there’s that whole lactose intolerance thing that might make things difficult).

As I creep toward the end of Once, I’ve been debating covers. This is probably something I’ll try to hire out. I have passable Photoshop skillz, but probably not enough to make it look professional. At the moment, I’m leaning toward purchasing some stock space photography photos and just going for name and title…maybe apply one of those “mystic” filters to it. I’m not particularly interested in having people on the cover, or even spaceships, so right now most of the stock art I’ve bookmarked consists of stars, nebulae, and some fantasy-type “planetrise” composites.

My website is still a horror. I may cave in and hire someone to do something with it until I have time to train myself, particularly if the shorts are done before I can get around to that. I guess if it comes down to it I can link to people through here, but…hoping to get things sorted out before then.

I was explaining the plot to my mother while trying to enlist her for some basic proofreading. She was relieved there were no zombies. I pointed out that I have written other stories that don’t involve the living dead. She said I never showed her them.

Whoops.