Cold weather damage.

Adding up the damage from the cold weather.

Broken spring on our garage door opener.

Two frozen faucets (one frozen pipe?) but escaped pipe bursting.

Slower business than it should have been.

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I belong to a writer's group, which is having its Christmas party this Saturday.  There will probably be 20 or more people at this party, even though only about 5 people usually show up for the actual group -- the same five people, usually.

I'm going to screw up my courage and stand up and nag some of these guys to start coming to to the real group once in awhile.  If everyone went to two meetings a year, minimum, the whole thing would work better.

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Had a young man show up for group last night.  It was funny, he was a college English major and he knew all the correct "grammatical" terms. 

He'd be great if he kept coming, but our group is full of middle aged or older duffers and young people don't usually keep coming, sadly.  I wish they did.

Age is so ridiculous.  I really do feel like I just came back to writing after a couple of years off.  Really, I feel like maybe a 35 year old.  

I didn't come back as that much better a writer as I left off -- which kind of surprised me.  What I did do is jettison a lot of the unnecessary doubts.

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He mentioned that I had some one sentence paragraphs that didn't need to be so short.

I know where this came from -- it came from this blog.  Short pithy paragraphs work better in the blog.

When I started rewriting Deviltree it was interesting how long the paragraphs were -- too long, really.

So, yeah, I'm going to be more conscious of that from now on.


Or should it be:

He mentioned that I had some one sentence paragraphs that didn't need to be so short.  I know where this came from-- it came from this blog.  Short pithy paragraphs work better in a blog.  When I started rewriting Deviltree it was interesting how long the paragraphs were -- too long, really.  So, yeah, I'm going to be more conscious of that from now on.


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Rapidly reaching that point in the season where I wonder if I should do more reorders.  In another week, whatever I reorder will show up in the January bills, and I don't want too much of that.  Also, it will give me just a few more days to sell things before Christmas.

So I have to pick that perfect moment for the last order -- somewhere between now and about the 16th or so.

What's nerve wracking about modern Christmas's is that everyone waits until the last moment.  The last 10 days or so.  By the time you can get a good read on how it's going to go, it's almost too late to do anything about it.

So you have to gamble, try not to buy too much or too little.

It's such a weird sensation to do average business for the first half of the month.