but i swear in the days still left we will walk in fields of gold

Between not sleeping enough last night and driving up from Los Angeles today, I'm properly exhausted and ready to toss away the laptop for the night. I woke up a little before eight a.m. (shocking, I know), and Terry and I had breakfast at a cafe near her (which was v. quiet, since most people were either out at the Black Friday sales or still recovering from yesterday's feasting) before she saw me off at ten a.m. I got home around 3:30, which means I made excellent time; I stopped once to get coffee, once to get gas, and once at Casa de Fruta to use the bathroom and walk around for five minutes since I was getting sleepy in the car, but 5.5 hours with three stops is quite speedy. While it would have been nice to have stayed longer, I'm glad I left today and avoided the weekend traffic -- and as you know from last night's post, writing is going to be imperative over the next few days anyway.

But when I got home, I was too tired to write, and so I caught up on some stuff online and then took a nap. I woke up around six, realized I was starving and had no food in the house, and so ordered and picked up a pizza from Applewood in Menlo Park. Then I curled up on the couch (did I mention that it was fifty degrees in my house when I got home? it's warmer now, since I've decided to accept the weird fluctuations in temperature caused by the sticking thermostat needle; it's supposed to be 40 degrees tonight, and so warm/cool oscillations in temperature are better than freezing to death) and watched the finale of "Top Chef: Just Desserts" (verdict: mostly boring). Then, in an attempt to get myself back into the romance frame of mind and contemplate how I want to write the end of my book, I reread a few of my favorite Georgette Heyer endings: THE MASQUERADERS, THE UNKNOWN AJAX, and DEVIL'S CUB. I could have just as easily read THE GRAND SOPHY or SYLVESTER or BATH TANGLE or any of the other twenty Georgette Heyer romances sitting on my special Georgette Heyer shelf, but these three will have to do. All three involve, to greater or lesser degrees, an extended climax in which someone's clever machinations are all explained and the gentleman wins the lady. Since I'm contemplating having Ferguson make a particularly insane and ridiculous plot to win over Madeleine during the climax, rereading these was quite useful (and fun, of course).

But now, I should go to bed; I'm training with Alyssa tomorrow morning, and then after that I've completely cleared my schedule until Tuesday night, when I need to mail my Golden Heart entry just before going to my blogging class. It's going to be a busy few days, so I'm going to get a good night's sleep tonight in preparation. Goodnight!