A random round-up kind of post....

So here we are, summer in the north of England.... and amazingly this year we are having some fantastic weather, though admittedly we are at the stage where a little rain would be nice.... or a bloody great thunderstorm to break the closeness....

I haven't been a terribly good blogger lately... life has just sort of got on top of things... not to mention that well, life hasn't thrown anything too exciting my way.

Weekdays have, as usual involved work.... we've had a major reshuffle in our department, but my job wasn't really affected... that will change in October thought when my team leader goes on maternity leave and I will probably be acting up as team leader for 12 months.

Evenings and weekends have been spent writing, or rather trying to write, my second Love's Landscapes story... I have enjoyed the research side of things but getting the story down is testing me.  I am assured by my wonderful beta readers that what I've got so far isn't the load of complete tripe that I feared it was......and that I should carry on.   The chest infection I had a couple of weeks ago really knocked me flat for a while - I am still on antibiotics and will be for another two weeks, plus I have some other drugs to take with it to try and boost my immune system which really didn't appreciate the infection at all!  Because of that the organisers have given me an extension... so I have another week to finish writing.  I am, I think, just over a third through the first draft, with several scenes for later mapped out (and the epilogue which one of my betas is insisting on is done)  Yesterday was a good writing day.... today not so much!  The muse and Rupert are fickle and some days they just don't want to play!

What else, my mum and sister went off to Turkey for two weeks and had a fantastic time - although mum came back with a badly swollen finger which it turns out is gout - she's not impressed with that diagnosis and keeps insisting it was a mosquito bite that went bad.... She's in a tizzy today - I went round for coffee this evening and ended up having to examine her cat who was limping, a bit of prodding and poking and I found an abscess on the top of her paw... which after a bit of squeezing I managed to drain down... neither mum or cat is now happy and they will be off to the vets tomorrow.

My own critters are split over the hot weather - the dogs really don't like it that much and their coats are coming out in handfuls, seriously I could knit a extra spitz out of the amount of coat I am hoovering up each day!  The cats on the other hand are basking in the sunshine.... the only downside is that they are eating over twice their usual amount of food each day - which is costing me a fortune in both food and litter!

So yes, that's about it for the unexciting life I lead.... an now I must go make my packed lunch for work tomorrow....... I wonder if any of my colleagues will notice that I have had my hair chopped off over the weekend.