Now that I’m all registered for school and filling out the forms for graduation, and now that soccer is over for a bit, it occurs to me that I now can think about starting back up on some of the things I gave up for grad school. I had to stop the Tae Kwon Do, for example, when I was just a year or so away from getting my black belt. But now I want to take Tai’Chi, so I’ve started looking around for classes. I found a place that has Tai’Chi on Mondays and Pilates two other days a week, so maybe I’ll do that, if it’s not too expensive. There’s also a place that teaches Flamenco, and I have always wanted to learn Flamenco. So I’ll call around tomorrow and see what I can do.

I’ve now read three of my RITA books, and unlike last year when I had serious issues with almost all the books I read (it was painful, really painful for me) so far, they’ve been darn good. One in particular is by a new and really talented writer. I think this book has some flaws, but they’re flaws from someone who can write, and there’s a big difference between that and the kind of flaws that crop up in books by a writer who doesn’t have the beef, if you will.

I didn’t get all that much done this weekend, on account of Saturday being sucked up by soccer, and last night reading a RITA book, and then another one this morning. Then my son had an indoor soccer game and since the other team didn’t show up, the parents went out on the field and played the kids instead. What a hoot! I was on defense, and I have a whole new respect for my son’s position. We were losing until my son came out of goal and went on offense, then the proud parents scored several goals. Yeah! The kids who played goalie after my son had never played goal before and we took shameless advantage. We had to. Those kids are in shape!

There was a report in the local paper about three sightings of a "large black cat" about two miles from here. One by a biology student on her way to school. There are mountain lions around here, and there’s a local park, a big wilderness type park here where my son’s class actually saw a mountain lion, but we don’t have black panthers here. If the sightings are real, there must have be some jerk who had one for a "pet" and it got free. Scary. If it’s true, I imagine we’d hear shortly about livestock being killed. Lots of cows and sheep out that way. We have foxes, coyotes and bobcats out here, and, as mentioned the occasional mountain lion, but panthers? Yikes! Hopefully, it’s not true.

I’ve been working on Magellan’s Witch and will fail the word count minimum, of course. But things are going OK. I’ve started the 2nd of the two new chapters, and darned if I didn’t find out that my hero has a tragic love in his past. I like when that happens. All the planning for writing just doesn’t substitute for actual writing. Back to it for a bit.