The winter is bleak, but the sun is out

Only a bit of news in the Yeats-Grey household, but it's a big one. It looks like--after a lot of discussion and math and more discussion and reading Rick Steves--we are going to Ireland this summer for a 10th-anniversary/my 40th birthday adventure! We''re no further along in the process than sending in our passport renewals (the checks have already been cashed, Yeats says that's a good sign) and deciding some broad strokes of where we want to go (DUBLIN, and Kinsale and maybe one or two other places within a day's drive of Dublin). We have the funds, we have our priorities in order--food, beer, books and literary things--and I don't think Aveline will begrudge me eight days in late June and early July. It's still too far out to be more than a shine on the horizon right now, but--whee!

(This will also keep me from being available for any kind of surprise revelry on my birthday. Yeats and Firiel would never give me black balloons or birthday cards about "the beginning of the end" or make any similar jokes, but some of the family finds that kind of thing the height of humor and I...don't.)

Here and now, the world goes along. Niece Abs is getting two of the re-issued My Little Ponies that I adored as a child for her 4th birthday. Sil says she will almost certainly repurpose them as explorers or princesses or explorer-princesses in her own make-believe games, but seeing as I was having My Little Ponies catch and tame dragons (with the help of a few of my brother's GI Joes), I'm fine with that. The new partner (I shall call him Anders, if my boss is Aveline) is friendly, and a good attorney, and has not once treated me like some kind of lesser being or filing machine. And he rolled with the punches last week when the copier ran out of toner right when he needed to print 6 50-page documents. Oh, and Yeats has secured my Valentine gift--we are going to see "The Dark Crystal" on the big screen! It's one of my favorite movies, ever since it simultaneously enchanted me and scared me to death as a child, and somehow Yeats has never seen it. This shall be remedied.

Reading Log: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black; A Hope Divided by Alyssa Cole; The Glass Spare by Lauren DeStefano; Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames; A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge; Lies, Damned Lies, and History by Jodi Taylor; Laura Ingalls is Ruining My Life by Shelley Tougas; The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters; Cobalt Squadron by Elizabeth Wein; The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang