time's inexorable stride

What did you do today?  I designed the prototype cover for my book:

Thanks go out to Harry for Photoshop advice, and to Carol Guillaume
for taking the picture of the sky I used for the background.

This thing is really coming together.  I'm starting to get feedback from my first-line readers trickling in (in fact, I have a lunch meeting with one of them planned for next week to talk about it!), and I'm very excited about sitting down with it again and hammering out the second draft.  I've never done this before; otherwise, I'd probably be much less excited.

In other news, I got a floor lamp for my office at work.  This news will especially titillate the bargain-hunters among you; at first I looked in our office products supplier's catalog, but the cheapest lamp in there was $175!  I decided that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I bought a lamp like that, even on Villanova's dime, so instead I went to Target and picked up this beauty for only $12:

Don't ask how I got these colors - just lucky, I guess.

I'm not a very good photographer, it seems, because that lamp is not turned on.  It doesn't even have a bulb in it yet.

The downside of spending $12 on a lamp at Target (for which I will have work reimburse me, never fear) is that, in the process of finding it, my wife managed to spend $300 on throw pillows and drapery sets, as she was seized by the sudden and unexpected need to redecorate our place.  You may see me post some updates to her project in the near future, as she works like a dervish when she's properly motivated (in this case, by the desire to make something look pretty).  It's OK, though; that just frees me up to spend time doing things to improve myself.

So let's have a Scott Self-Improvement Status Update!

WRITING POETRY:  ✓

WORKING ON BOOK:  ✓

PRACTICING AN INSTRUMENT (GUITAR):  ✓

BEING NICE TO WIFE:  ✓

BLOGGING:  ✓

WORKING OUT:  ✓

EATING RIGHT:  ✓

FEELING GOOD MENTALLY:   ✓

FEELING GOOD PHYSICALLY:  X

I got sick over the weekend.  Nothing too bad; a light fever or something, possibly food poisoning.  I got through the weekend anyway, but it was pretty uncomfortable.  A hearty "thank you" to all those who helped to distract me from my misery!  It turned out to be a fun weekend, after all.

To thank you for slogging through all this boring personal junk, an impromptu work of mine own:

I fear these--
The sundering beats of ancient wings,
     The shadow stretched across the ground,
         The cost of lost and spoiled things,
               That harsh and shreaking sound.