The family gathering was pulled off with a minimum of fuss.  Charcoal-grilled Nature’s Promise hamburgers, homemade peach cobbler, and plenty of generic chips, freezer-thawed french fries, and garden vegetable salad with mom’s homemade dressing.  Nothing beats a fresh slice of garden grown tomato on your burger, whoo-eee!  Then, crack out the Labor Day punch and talk family business to candlelight in the backyard.  Yeah, the Slack bonus points were a-cumulatin’ in the Slor that day I can tell you.

The book revisions have reached the 55% mark, which is awesome.  I got more done this weekend than I did my week long vacation to sit and write, even though I am sick with a sore throat and a clogged ear.  I can’t explain the discrepancy in the space-time continuum, though I believe it has to do with hitting a stretch where the writing didn’t need as much work, and the fact that the revisions are gaining momentum on the remaining pages.  Still need to do that polish stage, and complete my artwork for the cover, but I’m happy.  The revised material is much better than the first draft stuff.

K has been watching the first season of the Highlander television series, and I keep getting drawn in to watch.  We finished the first season this weekend, and all I can say is Darius!  I still think the first movie is the only one that counts, the others being pretty lame.  Part of that is nostalgia, and part of that is revulsion at the franchising effect on the story.  If you forget the movies, the television series is actually pretty good action, with some nice camp and an attempt to tell a story in exploration of the alternate universe.

The tomatoes from the garden have totally defeated us; we’re just giving them away now.  The weeds have gotten out of control, and the groundhog roams at will.  The sunflowers have pretty much bitten the dust, but there isn’t a seed left on them, so at least they are dying satisfied, so to speak.  We planted some fresh basil, which ought to produce for us some nice pesto in the next few weeks before autumn forces our hand to garden mark two.  We have a lizard now!  About seven inches, black with brown and ochre markings, living in our pile of unused wood.  We threw him some baby tomatoes and the next day we were rewarded with a pile of skins.  Yea!  Feed the animal bonus points!