Common sense is not so common (Voltaire).

Tip of the day, or rather from last night. If you have a candle that leans to one side, because you, say, left it over the radiator and it melted all lopsided, if you decide to burn it, propping it up on the melted side with a book of matches, don’t move said candle until after the wax hardens. All the sites recommend using an iron and a paper bag to remove hardened wax from the carpeting. I don’t iron. But it looks like now, I do. (Don’t tell my dad. He’s a lot touchy about the state of the carpet, surprising for a man who doesn’t care how badly I rut up the lawn.)

On the up side, the great hell day (Valentine’s Day) is over for another year. It actually wasn’t that bad this year though. A friend of mine and I once agreed that pink is not a color: it’s a mental disease. So a holiday with pink hearts just seems insane to me. But this year was pretty good and I kept snide remarks about it to a minimum. My honey and I slept in and then I took him out to lunch, since he’d nearly broken the bank paying for beer the night before. (Yeah, sleeping in isn’t nearly as romantic as it sounds when the reason you don’t get up is due to the headache that is sure to knock you flat on your ass as soon as your head goes vertical.) But Dad and I got each other valentines and I think it’s really great when a father and daughter can still share that special daddy-daughter relationship even when the daughter has hits twenty-something.

The past week was a great distraction from working on the book, even though Dana and I talked about submissions for the first book and flaws in the second book at great length and I went into major research mode. I’ve been doing a lot of reading for another project and of course mulling over the issues, mostly character motivation and how the magic works, for Taylor #2. Today I started back in with the edits. I just can’t leave the damn thing alone.

Dad’s on his once-a-year bowling gig today. Neither one of us are great sportspeople. Unless you count horses. We rock out then. He goes out bowling with the guys once a year, whether he needs to or not, he says. This was after cutting firewood this morning. He’s gonna be beat tonight, since we still have night chores to do. I don’t even try to bowl anymore since I have no style, as Dad says, or if I do it consists mostly of hurling the ball as far down the lane as possible, it landing with a loud crack, slamming into the gutter, and missing all the pins. And I’m not thinking the weight of the ball is an issue since I seem to do the same with a 30 pounder as a 15. Especially after doing square bales for a week. Got my high score that time. A whole 18 point game. Yeah, get me on a horse anyday. It's safer.