Good news and bad news

The good news is, we've had a remarkably busy five or six days, involving visits to and visits by many good friends and at least one fabulous feast cooked by moi (Cuban-style chicken with rice and plantains plantains plantains which I finally found in Newtown plantains plantains along with some frijoles pintos* and a not-quite-frozen-enough-but-very-nice-nevertheless homemade blueberry and macadamia sorbet).

The bad news (although nothing is really quite as bad when you've finally found plantains plantains plantains I love plantains) is that I haven't gotten anywhere near enough writing done recently, and it looks very unlikely that I'll be able to fully meet all three of my goals for Gauntlet II. I've got the one done (revising The Associates), but finishing Mud and Glass and writing a short play may very well elude me. Still, as one of my Clarion buddies pointed out during Gauntlet I, even if one doesn't fully succeed, at least one has more words than one did at the start.

*I would have very much preferred black beans (frijoles negros), but I had no idea how hard they are to find in Wollongong. I finally realized, at the cost of much time and petrol/gas, that the place I usually buy them is, in fact, the only place in Wollongong that sells them, and they close at lunchtime on Saturdays. I realized this crucially later than lunchtime on Saturday.