another new year come and gone. this one was about to be quiet; in fact, i went to bed right at about quarter to twelve; it had been so quiet, i just couldn't stay up. i thought, i'll take a shower, then it'll be midnight. but my shower was only about two minutes, so i jumped into bed. just as i was drifting off, the dog started barking loudly. maybe the kids had stepped outside with their dog - in any case, that was my new year.

got a kindle for christmas. that has changed my whole routine, because now i read more. i sit down, read and keep reading. it works. i like to hold it; i like the size of its fonts, i like picking it up and then letting it drift back to sleep when i'm done.

but i've been reading my own books, one at a time, i mean reading them, and i'm finding typos. it hacks me, since i'm a proofreader, and somehow i missed them the first time around. i don't like having books out there for sale, with little mistakes in them. comma then a capital letter. missing word in a sentence. worst, a character whosse name changes in the middle. maybe i decided to change the name, but didn't catch them all.

so that's my new year. i've stopped bogging temporarily - that was a huge time sink, though the best game on the internet - and i wake up actually wanting to read and write. in my writing i'm on the journey - i actually backed up to 1834 - and they're taking this wagon across from maine to illinois. it's wild. late at night i get started on it and just write away. i've divided a book about two different pioneers - father and son - into two different books, tentatively called pioneer leveretts and prairie leveretts. should be good reading for my descendants, i hope. it's what i'm totally involved in now.

we're having a cold year. day in, day out, down around ten at night or zero, water freezing if you leave it out, that kind of thing. i actually like walking in this weather, and do it sometimes, but in this jag of reading/writing, i'm doing less. clear skies as usual; you get used to that in new mexico. clear skies, dry as a bone. time to read and write.