Sunday suds.

We put Panga, our cat, on a bit of diet.

The other night, she tried to jump onto my lap and she didn't make it. She seemed really embarrassed by it -- I mean, she acted like it was no big deal but you could see it was. She is 16 pounds currently, and has been as high as 18 pounds.

We're giving her a tiny third of a small can of wet food in the morning, a quarter cup of dry food around dinner, and then about half a cup of dry food before bed.

Doesn't seem like much, does it?

But we really weren't feeding her much more than that, anyway...

If this doesn't work, I'm going to see if I can't get Linda to agree to leave her in our enclosed backyard during the day while we are at work. See if she can't shiver away a few pounds.

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Had a young guy come in yesterday and introduce himself and tell me he's been looking "everywhere" for Icetowers. For "years."

Icetowers is the sequel and conclusion to Snowcastles, and my guess is that it never got as wide a distribution as Star Axe or Snowcastles.

Anyway, I did my usual, "Probably have to buy it off the internet" but I could see he was living close to street level, so that wasn't helpful.

Here's the thing. He seemed to be genuinely enthusiastic about Snowcastles -- I mean, you can tell when someone really, really likes something and he did. He went on about it, why it was good and all.

So I gave him my store copy of Icetowers (my visual proof that I actually wrote it.)

This has happened a half a dozen times over the years -- people I don't know seeming to really like one of my books, and it is obviously most gratifying.

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I'm stuck on my book. I thought I might have had an elegant solution yesterday, but after sleeping on it, I decided that probably wouldn't work.

I think I'm just going to have to do some heavy rewriting, despite all my efforts to avoid such a thing.

But first, I have to figure out the organization of the rewrite, and that's something I just want to be sure about for I start.

So I'm sort of in limbo.

Once I start the second draft, it probably won't take all that long. Then ... depending on how it comes out, a third draft?

Oh, why did I start this?!

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I think a lot of us bubble busters thought there might be a surge in property crimes when the Great Recession started.

Instead, there seems to be arson fires just about every day.

What's going on? Is this just Bend, or is it some kind of recession pathology?

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My sleep patterns are still off. Not getting to sleep before 2:00 or later, and waking up at least an hour late, and still feeling groggy. Makes it harder to get my blog out in the morning.

With the daylight savings shift jumping an hour forward, this is only going to get worse.

Ah, well. This too shall pass.

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