between the sheets: when life gets in the way

I'm off for a few days for a long weekend visiting family up north for my brother-in-law's 30th. What with trips to the airport to pick up my sister who's flying into Brisbane for a whole other reason, dental and optical appointments, and staying at three different houses over four nights I don't see much time for liesurely writing during our four day stay.

But there is a two hour plane ride each way. And that's where Alphie comes in.

Alphie is my Alphasmart. A small, lightweight, battery operated slice of pure heaven. Like any man, Alphie ain't perfect. But I like to see the bright side of things. The screen fits only four lines of text, meaning you can't tweak terribly much even if you want to (good news for those of us who can spend half an hour on one sentence!), it makes a clacking noise as you type (makes me feel as though I'm working hard!).

But I've dropped him on concrete, shoved him in my handbag a thousand times, taken him the world over as at less than two kilograms he weighs less than my purse, and Im still on the same 2 AA batteries he came with over two years ago. What's not to love?

So, as I head up tonight, I will take my Alphie out on the plane, annoying the passenger next to me with my clacking, kinda hoping he/she won't glance over to find me writing anything too saucy, and I won't have any clue how many words I have written over the course of the long weekend until I get home Monday night. Always a happy thrill!!!

today's progress:

Every single html file in my whole computer got snapped up by a virus. I can talk about it now, but the last two days have been rather hellish. Especially for a girl who had spent about 5 hours the day before updating three websites for other people only to have the whole lot snaffled before they even hit the airwaves. Waaaahhhh. But head down bum on chair I redid them all yesterday using old back-upped versions as templates. La-di-dah!

And for a bit of back on the farm fun, for those of you waiting on chicklet news... We are beginning to think that the three we gave boys names to might just end up being the boys! Still not certain but what with markings, and behaviour (mock fighting one another, shooing away other birds) it's looking that way. Did we mess with fate? Should we have named them all girls?

And for another chicklet photo, I snapped this one yesterday. Look up the tree. One of the crazy kids seems to think she's some kind of bird!!!

For the journey of writing a Harlequin Romance from initial idea to 'the end', check out the whole Between the Sheets series…