August 22 already? Good God.

Now I know why senior citizens pop out of bed at 5 in the morning. I think it's fear that if they don't, they will wake up and it will be three years later.

I can't believe how fast the last couple of weeks have gone, and it stinks! I'm not ready for it to start getting dark again. It just got light!

Much has been afoot lately, but not much that really captures the interest. I opened a new savings account and finally sent in paperwork for my 401(k) IRA thingamajob. It required two sets of papers, four months of searching for the first set that I lost, a healthy dose of procrastination trying to find an envelope, endless and increasingly irritated e-mails and phone messages from my 401k company, two out-of-date stamps and my husband's forged signature...with his permission, of course.

We are trying to get a tiny deck built onto our tiny place in Michigan, but we've been dealing with a "FIP tax" that includes a markup of about 60%. Not joking. (They see the IL license plate, and basically add on a healthy gratuity.) $6000 for an 8x8 deck! So, I finally thought to use my brain, and asked my parents who live 30 minutes away, to recommend someone and discovered from one guy who attended our wedding...Oh! We ARE getting ripped off??? Do tell!

Other than that...it's pretty boring...which is why I haven't been writing. For example, here's my day today.

6AM, alarm goes off, 6:10, 6:20, 6:30 hit snooze. 6:40 Brendan puts a pillow over my face and I make the wise decision to stop hitting snooze and decide perhaps it's time to get up. 7:30, try to figure out how it took me 45 minutes to get ready when I had everything ready and showered last night. 7:40 write check for cleaning lady, feed/water/walk dogs. 7:50 Carry bike downstairs, and load it along with two bags of workout gear onto car 8 AM: Holy crap am I late. 8:10, really need something to eat. It won't hurt to stop. 8:40 get to work, thank god zero traffic today b/c everyone on vacation. Work work work. 9am: Debate about coffee. Need to drink water due to exercise schedule and noon run, coffee is not a good idea, will dehydrate me and make workout painful. 9:45am: Pour myself some coffee. 10am: Get refill. 12noon: Go for 4 mile run at gym, avoiding eye contact with personal trainer I have been dodging for months now. 12:30, decide to make it a 2.5 mile run, shower, back to work. Work, work, workety work. 4pm: People realize I'm on vacation next week, and not physically in the office until after Labor Day, so they start giving me projects. 5pm on dot: must leave in order to make class at 6pm in city. 6-8: Oh, my good Lord, what have I done to my legs with this bicycle class that I thought would be a good bonding experience with my husband? My rear end can't take it. It's like sitting on a square brick in your underwear for 2 hours...not to mention I'm pedaling like mad and I haven't eaten since that gel I choked down after work. Feel like might die. Hope, in fact. 8:30pm: Pick up dinner and just shake arm for salt. 9pm: Watch some sort of Tivo'd junk while I try to finish formatting pages of novel, and re-over-thinking a lot of cheesy sentences. 11pm: Make my legs move to go upstairs and shower. 11:30 Collapse.

See? Nothing in there too terribly interesting to write about.

Although, I do have to tell you about Alinea. Oh, also, there is this awesome Romance writing contest that you can sign up to view and judge. They start voting next week (Aug 27, I believe.) (Unfortunately, I can't enter b/c my book's a little longer than the regulated max length.) But, it could make for some fun reading. (I got a sneak peek at some submissions yesterday and, well, let's just say some of the character names are FAN-tastic.) [Phyllistine, anyone?] I can also guarantee at least one pirate and an earl. I mean, come on, that is just completely awesome.

(You can start sneaking a peek here. See what I mean?)