I was away from my desk (aka couch) this morning, first at the Y (where that skinny guy with a Notre Dame sweatshirt who reminds me so much of an old biology-teaching/cross-country coaching colleague just runs laps and laps around me almost every time I go  – he must be training for a marathon or something), then to an Undisclosed Location where I finally finished reading through my manuscript – which isn’t awful. That’s the big news. "Not Awful" is pretty good, I think, when you’re evaluating your own work. Even made myself weepy a bit at the end, but I’m not sure if that was because it was moving or just glad to be done with it.

So now, at last, since snow days and (we hope) sickness are done with, I’ll be moving into high and deep gear, really working on pulling it all together, cleaning up inconsistencies, brutally editing the repetitious or pointless and working at being more specific and more meta all at the same time. If that makes no sense to you…sorry. It’s the way I think about it.

How long will it take? It better not take too long, considering I have two other books due in about two months and change. Yeah.