Doesn’t feel like a Friday

Work. For the next 3-4 months, I’m going to be pretty busy with two big projects. One is designing and writing the content for the website that’s part of my NIH grant, which will help women who want their husbands/domestic partners to quit using smokeless tobacco. The other is writing a proposal to the FDA to develop a program to discourage at-risk teens from using e-cigarettes (unless, of course, they’re already hooked on cigarettes, in which case a switch to e-cigs is probably a good thing). Meanwhile, of course, the writing projects I actually want to do are still waiting for me patiently.

Today I decided that since I’ll have plenty of time to work this weekend (with D&J at an all-day Magic tournament on Sunday and practicing for it tomorrow), I could take the day off from the Big Two. Instead, I worked a bit on the first of two papers I’m making out of my dissertation. The part I’m on now is the tiresome task of eliminating most of the tables while keeping the interesting bits from them in the text. It’s not too bad, though.

Kittens. Sorin (the silver tabby) really wants to leap to the top of the main set of bookshelves in this room. As soon as he showed interest, I took the pretty piece of pottery away for safekeeping, but that left an empty landing zone at the end of the shelf, and Sorin liked hopping up there. Now it’s blocked off with a stack of books and two teddy bears, but he still keeps thinking about it. Ajani (the white one) could leap up there with no effort if he wanted – good thing he doesn’t want to, yet. Meanwhile, today Sorin broke a bowl – D. had left it on the dining table after breakfast, and when Ajani was chasing him, Sorin skidded across D’s placemat, knocking the bowl into the chair and breaking it into four pieces. It was one I’d recently acquired from my mom’s things, and I quite liked it, alas.