October Updates

Fall in the U.P., photo shamelessly ripped off from a Facebook friend

Whoa, it's already one-third of the way through October and I haven't posted yet this month. Shame on me, but to be fair I've been devoting most of my free time to revisions, so that makes it ok, right?

Fall has fallen in L.A., starting with a lovely rainstorm last week and crisper mornings ever since. Mornings on the hardwood floors are chilly, but the cat, who had forsaken us for his glamorous new kitty condo, has returned to sleeping curled up between my feet at night, which I missed. Fall is also when my baking gene kicks in, so we've had gingerbread pear cake and focaccia, and I've got a bag of festering bananas that I'm hoping to make into banana bread tomorrow, if I can get up the motivation to try this recipe. I may have ordered a new bread cookbook. And a copy of this book, which I think looks completely fascinating.

Chilly weather gave us an excuse last week to try out the fireplace in our new home (built 1911). Thank goodness my husband had the idea to test things out with a piece of newspaper before lighting a Duraflame, so that we were only mildly smoked out when we discovered the chimney is sealed off. And that was when we learned that the giant chunky grate in our fireplace has a bio-ethanol burner built into it. Oops. One shop-vac cleaning and a liter of bio-ethanol found under the cellar stairs later, and we had a cozy fire. Brings to mind that excellent Wedding Singer quote, "Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention YESTERDAY." It's okay, landlord, we'll figure this stuff out ourselves.

I haven't been very good this past week at reading blogs or answering email, so if I owe you a response, please know that I haven't forgotten about you. My goal is to get all caught up this week, and also to finish my revisions. By Friday. But for now, I must bid you adieu and find a way to relocate the happy creature lying half on my keyboard and breathing his hot hot cat breath into my ribcage.