Mmmm. Morning.

I will probably go back to sleep at some point, in all honesty, but I'm not sure. We slept last night with the tornado fan on low, which worked really nicely. I'm thinking another one or two of those and we might keep this house liveable, I just hate to think we might have to clean so that papers wouldn't go every-which-way. ;)

Stirred to see light outside the window, was intending to get up early in the morning so I could water the lawn at a time when the sun was at least not going to bake all of it off. Glanced at the clock. Um. Not that early. 5 am was not doable. Went back to sleep.

Got up right around six (woke up a minute or two before, but it took me a few to move). I have been outside and watered the lawn, then came back in, grabbed my camera, went back outside and photographed like mad. Now to see if any of them turned out like I hope. I know at least one didn't. *laughs* I had the camera on auto-bracket and forgot it. So I moved it. Sigh. I probably have a blurry shot of the deck rail, at a guess.

Came back in, grabbed a breakfast bar and some ice water, I'm almost ready to face the day. Except I want the tornado fan aimed at me only it's still letting Scott sleep.

The reason I expect to be tired today is that I stayed up 'til about midnight last night, having gotten totally ensconced in writing some mush code (which is coming along well and doing what I want it to - and what I said it would - so far).

I also got the laundry done, except for the second load of towels, which I'll have to run sometime today.

So, yesterday got massively better after my attempt to renew my Japanese Gardens membership (that having failed out due to inability to park there). I've talked to Scott and will drop back to individual or indiv plus, not sure which yet. (He hasn't gone in the past year and a half, I don't believe.)

The birds are chirping. They are annoying me. They start with B, but they keep hiding in trees where I can't take photographs of them. *grins*

Ahhhh, photography.

I took 60-70 photos this morning, in batches of three (light exposure, 'proper' exposure according ot the camera, dim exposure). I pulled out ten that are decent photos, seven of which are on-topic for the current challenge, even. Now to see which ones actually work best.

Mmm. A day, a day, a day, a weekend. This is good.

Tornado fans rock. The house is liveable. Has been all day. Worst was when the wind started and I took a while to get the initiative to turn the fan so it was blowing with the wind.

The aura code is in a half-finished state. I can set most of the core attributes; I can't set most of the secondary (player-relevant) attributes from commands yet. I need to add a new subroutine I only just thought of. And the commands to view the auras, and all the subfunctions to determine how much you see, still need to be written or rewritten.

You'd think from that, that the code is barely started. Not so; over half of the functions and perhaps that much of the commands, are implemented. But I was becoming a progressively-more-grumpy coder, and as I'd already started out quite grumpy from the heat and everything, I didn't think it was good to encourage that!

So I stopped where I was, and it's not bad. And when I stopped there, I picked up the request for a +mailstatus command, stole some formatting from +finger, and beat out a command. The +help isn't in yet, but the command is, and the +help will follow, and it works, and it's good. I surprised dansa with it - she hadn't known I was going to code it - and when I asked if it could stay, her response was simply, "OHMYGODYES!"

I think that means I did good.

I also got in a scene today, which was pleasant - the other person posed well and it was good. It wasn't deep - there's no plot out of that yet - and it wasn't ongoing in any sense, as they'd never met before. But it was a fun little vignette, and who knows, it might inform story more in the future, or it might not. I enjoyed it.

I've entered my 'B'-themed subject for the current challenge. I am more pleased with this than with my entries in the past, but I'm still not entirely pleased. Still, it's a better job, and while I would love perfection, at this point I will settle for improvement. I'm not so sure about the theme of "speed". It's hard to take a picture of things that don't interest you, and most of what I can think of that's fast, doesn't interest me. (A bird of prey stooping, would. I have what prayer of actually seeing one, let alone having my camera ready?)

I have voted in the challenge that ends tonight. I don't have an entry in it - if I had joined a little sooner, I might have photographed the construction workers at the new shopping center. Considering there were several similarly-themed photos there, I don't particularly feel the timing to be a disaster. My entry in Country Life - the open challenge - is not going to make a 5 by Tuesday night when that ends. I sort of hope my 'B' entry will hit a 5, but I won't have a better idea till it's been in voting a bit, I imagine.

Meanwhile, I've not voted on the country life enough for my votes to count, and that closes Tuesday. We'll see if my votes count, or only my comments. I've been trying to leave at least some, though I know others comment more than I do. And some less; some, I'm sure, not at all.

I've got Kushiel's Avatar from the library and am about 125 pages in, so far. It's a good book, as I'm finding to be usual for this author (at least this series, which is all I've read and I think all the fiction she's yet published). Talk about an alternate history, and a carefully-constructed one. (I almost said good, but that could be taken other ways, and all I mean here is that it's a work of art in its own right, not necessarily one that will be likeable to all.)

The birds are singing a lot lately, and my flowers are blooming. Kind of nice to have not managed to kill all of them. I am such a poor green-thing-tender. :P

The laundry is done, and the dishes, and all that remains is to take the trash out, which I will probably do at some point shortly. It's lovely out there now that it's starting to cool down, too.