Good morning, friends! I’m not sure how I let time get this far away from me. I apologize. When I started to think about why I haven’t written here, I have no good excuses. Busy, sure, but not as busy as I’ve ever been. Nothing much is going on—that’s probably closer to the truth.

There’s work. You don’t want to hear about that.

There’s the rest of that everyday living stuff. Bo-ring! I’ll spare you.

I’ve read some books. I owe you an update there. I’m sure that’s why you show up here, to see what Lori’s reading.

I’ve been writing. Not with lightning efficiency, but still. Some words are building up in a document I still haven’t named. I think I’m up to about 33,000 words at this point. I should figure out what I’m doing any minute now.

Have not heard from the agent who has my other novel draft. She told me not to take silence as rejection, and so I’m working on that. I can take ANYTHING as rejection, so she’s clearly insane if she thinks I won’t take silence that way. I’m working on patience, though, since no answer at all is not yet a no. My friend James read that book recently and gave me a lovely play-by-play of his reactions as he read it. Each chapter comes with a little paragraph of suggestions and WOW!!!s. How awesome is that? Thanks, James!

We have friends staying with us this weekend. We took them to Graceland Cemetery yesterday. I know: Now you all want to visit us. But it was cool. Lots of famous old Chicagoans are buried there, so we tramped around checking them off the handy map we got at the front gates. The publisher of the Chicago Daily News is the winner of the coolest grave ever award. He has a huge knight Crusader over his bones, and it’s totally unmarked. His name only appears in the map! Somebody was pretty sure he was going to heaven, huh? After a long walk spoiled by the hot, we got lunch at Kopi Cafe (our guests are vegetarians) in Andersonville. I would highly recommend the OJ Dream specialty drink. It was an dreamsicle milkshake, basically. And then we went home to the AC and treated our friends’ twelve-year-old daughter to her first viewing of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Such a sheltered life. And then veggie tacos and homemade ice cream.

Now you DO want to visit.

At the moment I’m on my back porch. A breeze is coming through the windows. It’s cool outside at last. I have one more week of work before I get ten days of non-work in a row. All is right with the world. As long as I don’t have to make breakfast.