There were some bright spots. We had a lovely lunch at the Winnemucca Pizzaria, an unexpected oasis in the middle of Nevada. Our hotel room is very nice. And best of all, the Fairmont offers free parking if you have a hybrid (regularly $26 a night! Eeek! Or the hassle of finding other parking.).

So I’m even more delighted than usual to have arrived at World Fantasy, and am eager to take on the world tomorrow — after a nice long sleep.

The Strange Horizons fund drive continues. They’ve met their goal, thanks to John Scalzi, but contributions are always welcome. Win prizes! Support a really terrific magazine. Browse through the archives while you’re there — years and years of top-notch stories, freely available.

Sean’s been sick lately, and yesterday we ended up taking him to instacare to get a sinus infection diagnosed and treated. Poor bunny.

My to-d0 list is approaching 80 things, which is on the ridiculous side. Things have been moving slowly around here because Sean hasn’t been feeling well, but I think it’s time to get some stuff DONE. I shift to a new schedule at work next week, with every other Monday off; I’m hoping that having a whole day to myself every other week will help me plow through my backlog of tasks and be even more awesome.

Back to the salt mines!

I could have used another week off, I think. Towards the end of my vacation, I was just barely able to start to think about getting back to work — but I wasn’t ready. I needed the first week to just rest, I think; I needed more time to actually get restored and rejuvenated.

So I spent some time streamlining my list this week. I let go of a few projects, and got myself to buckle down and finish off a few others. I put more leisure and fun things to do on my list. I spent more time at yoga and less time pounding my head on the mountain of stuff I have to do.

Still grumpy, though. I still want to do everything.

Came back to a mountain of work. I’ve been chipping away at it, but it’s been a slog, and it’s made me grumpy. One of the things I realized on vacation was how radical the mismatch is between all the stuff I want to do and the available time — it’s just impossible. Partly, that was a depressing realization, that I simply can’t do everything; but it was also reassuring. The reason I’m not getting everything done isn’t that I suck (though, sure, there are some areas I could improve in); it’s that it’s impossible.

I’m Beth Wodzinski. I’m a writer. I publish and edit Shimmer magazine. I live in Salt Lake City with Sean Markey and too many cats and a dog. I work as a software quality analyst for the federal government.

It’s a good life.

Time to get my own domain, I thought, so I spent a cheerful July 4th weekend getting things set up. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it might be, though there’s still a lot of work to do. I hope you’ll stick around and see what develops here.