A great day with a sort of down ending

Note to self: now that it's getting dark, don't take late afternoon naps. I did today, woke up about 5:30, and was discouraged by the early arrival of twilight. Felt sort of sluggish. Tomorrow, of course, will be even worse. I was expecting Jacob about 5:30 for the night, so I flew out of bed...only to discover his baseball game was cancelled, he fell asleep, and wasn't spending the night tonight. So all in all I felt a bit letdown...but I cheered myself with large sea scallops, a half ear of corn, and a small salad for a late supper. So good.
Until that nap (maybe there's a lesson there), it had been a great day. Temperature this morning around seventy when I went to Central Market, so I put the top down on the car. Got all sorts of good things I didn't really need, came home and made a huge Greek casserole, sort of a version of pastitsio with ground lamb, penne pasta, and a ricotta sauce instead of bechamel. Cooking is my idea of a perfect Saturay morning, though the casserole is for tomorrow night's supper.
Read a book--Hank Phillipp Ryan's The Other Woman--while I ate lunch and then settled down to write. Got the scene rattling around in my brain finished--we'll see how it reads tomorrow. But I have one scene to go to finish the first draft of this novel, and, now rejuvenated by supper, I think I'll tackle it tonight.
After writing came that long, late nap, so I got to do all my favorite things today--cook, write, read, and nap. Still missing doing the puzzle with Jacob but there will be many other opportunities. And who knows? I may go work on it by myself. All in all a good day.
But I'm not happy about the end of daylight savings time. I rather like dark in the morning, and I love light evenings, dread the dark of winter even here in Texas,

Funky Day

No other word for it--it's been a funky day. Spent the morning making meatballs with brown gravy, sort of a complicated process. You mix meat, egg, parsley, summer savory, salt, pepper, and so forth, then put it into the blender until it's paste-like. Then you bake the meatballs for 30 minutes; then brown in butter and olive oil; remove from pan and make brown gravy with red wine, beef broth, and tomato paste. Took me parts of most of the morning, and I find these days a morning of cooking tires me--hate that!
It's rained all day, some of it with thunder and some of it quite a hard downpour. At some points it was almost dark as night. Scooby thought it was a good day to be in, but he stayed close to me--thunderstorms terrify him. I thought it was a great afternoon for  reading and napping--finished Air Time, by Hank Phillipp Ryan, another great read in her series about Charlotte McNally, a Boston TV investigative reporter. Since that's what Ryan does in her daytime job in Boston, so she really knows whereof she writes. But better than that, she creates credible characters that you like and identify with. There's the requisite tension, and though you know it will all come out all right (or mostly so), Ryan still keeps you reading. I think characters are so much more important than plot in mysteries. I don't want to read about people I don't like or care about.
Spent some time exploring promotion options on Amazon (haven't had many sales of my e-book, Sue Ellen Learns to Dance) but the options thoroughly confused me. Brandon sent me directions for downloading a friend's book from Smashwords to my Kindle--they made sense on paper but confused me in practice. Both failures sent me further into a funk, but I'll recover. I did manage to write some updates for my web page and send them to the designer, so that's one thing accomplished. But I really want to be able to update my own page--others do it, so surely I can. Brandon's opinion about that was that I really don't want to learn HTML and he surely doesn't want to teach me.
Jacob was supposed to come tonight but his mom doesn't feel well and decided to stay home. When she first mentioned this, I saw a light--I wouldn't have to keep Jacob away from an already nervous dog, I could do the writing I didn't do this afternoon, and I could finish my cooking without distraction tomorrow. But of course, when she confirmed that she was keeping him home, I was disappointed. I will write--try for 2000 words.

Memoir class, animals, and a good mystery

I taught my memoir writing class at TCU today. I use the word "taught" lightly, because my only function is to spur discussion, and some of the pieces people write do that without any input from me. I try to get the class to see the submissions not as an isolated piece of writing but as a partial statement of who the writer is today. It amazes me that some people, one I've known for years, have stories in their backgrounds I'd never have guessed. The different approaches to life and its ups and downs are fascinating, but with a few exceptions I don't find this group ready to come to grips with the hard things in their lives. Still, it was an interesting and lively hour. My theory is that memoir is the story of how you got to be where you are today. I drove one of the class members back to her office, and she said, "I'm really enjoying this. It makes you think." I guess I couldn't ask for more.
My animals, both in their dotage, are changing their habits. I read today about the importance of socialization of your animals--i.e., dogs left outside. Well, my Aussie is outside all day, because he, a rescued dog, can't be trusted in the house without supervision.. I used to think chasing squirrels kept him active and interested, but now that he's eleven, I've noticed him lying in the sun while squirrels parade on the grass. I bring him in after supper, take him to my office, and give him treats--but as soon as he eaten his treats, he wants to go drink water and go to his bed, next to my bed. No more lounging lovingly at my feet while I work at my desk And my eighteen-year-old cat has gone back to sleeping at the foot of my bed, which I really like. He doesn't spend as much time on my desk, and while I miss the companionship, he was often in the way of what I needed to do. But I think that he sleeps on the bed so he can watch for my first restless moment in the morning and yowl to be fed.
I didn't get much done today, and I blame it all on an author. A couple of weeks ago Hank Phillipi Ryan offered ten free copies of her new novel, Drive Time, to the first ten who responded. I was one of the lucky ones and got the book. It introduced me to a whole new series and a protagonist I really like. Hank is an investigative reporter for a Boston TV channel, and so is her protagonist, so she knows whereof she writes. She's created a character who's determined, smart, and oh-so-career minded but who is also very human. I'm only about a third of the way through, but I've not done much else today besides the class, some e-mail, and my bike workout. Thanks, Hank, for giving me another reason to put off getting back to my own novel! I swear when I finish this, the only fiction I'll read is my novel--I've been away from it so long that I'll have to read from the beginning to get myself back into the story.
Our Texas weather continues to be absolutely lovely, so I took Hank's novel and a glass of wine to the porch tonight and enjoyed both thoroughly.