Taxes, books and storms

Note to self: No matter how sniffly, sneezy and coughy I am, I should not take even the tiny baby dose of Benadryl on the day I'm supposed to be doing my taxes. Those forms are crazy enough when I'm fully conscious and impossible when I'm zoned out. But my taxes are now done, and I don't have too horrendously huge a check to write. Really, I don't think taxes are all that hard to do, which sometimes makes me paranoid that I'm doing something wrong. I'm sure I'm missing some potential deductions, but probably not enough to make it worthwhile to tear my hair out over figuring them out.

On a happier note, I got the first copies of the final printed version of Damsel Under Stress on Friday, hot off the press. This is what will be in stores two weeks from tomorrow. There's something different about the way the cover was printed on this book that apparently wasn't planned, and I'm still not sure whether or not I like it (cryptic enough for you?). Still, it's very pretty.

For those who saw the weather reports from Friday, I dodged a bullet from those storms. The tornadoes were about 10-15 miles from me, and the worst part of the storm was ten miles to the south of me. I never lost power. We did get some pea and marble-sized hail, with a few ping-pong balls thrown in. All of that is very, very loud and quite alarming when it hits a clay tile roof. The location of my neighborhood is such that it's easy to pinpoint on the radar map because it's close to a major freeway interchange on one side and a lake on the other, and it was eerie how accurate the TV radar was. The moment I saw the purple hail blob hit what I figured to be my neighborhood on the map, I heard the first thuds on the roof.

When I was done with my taxes, I watched the first episode of Drive. I'm not sure yet how much I like it. I'm not big on cars and driving, so watching an hour of people driving isn't high on my list of fun things to do, but some of the characters are intriguing. I'm not quite to the point where I'd watch Nathan Fillion read a VCR manual written by Tim Minear, but I'm very close, so I'll keep watching for a while. I have to admit that the opening scene, in which Nathan Fillion's character was being questioned by a former guest Firefly bad guy gave me total "Objects in Space" flashbacks, and then I fantasized a bit that once this show took off, then the second season would jump forward 500 years in the future and take place in space, and instead of driving an old pick-up truck, Nathan would be in a beat-up old spaceship, and it would turn out that the whole thing was a clever plot to find a way to get Firefly back on TV without the Fox executives noticing.

It's a busy week for me, with a library talk Wednesday night and a trip to Colorado Springs for a writing conference on Friday, for which I have to prepare a couple of presentations. That means either I'll get really, really chatty here (if I'm procrastinating) or very terse.