Spring in Arizona

I've never really had a favourite month. When I was younger and people would ask I'd always say August because that's the month I was born, therefore it is special. But living in Arizona I finally have a proper favourite month and it is February (it'll go back to being August once we move back to Ireland). I remember loving February here last year and I've kind of been spending the whole year waiting to see if my memory was correct. And it was. I just went for a walk with River and it is the most perfect day out there. And that's what February in Arizona. 28 (or 29) days of pure perfection.

I also want to jot down (for posterity) that I fixed my mouse today. Ever since I got it (over a year ago) the scroll wheel has been a bit sticky. It just never scrolled smoothly. So yesterday I finally got annoyed enough at it (can't even remember what pushed me over the edge) to go buy some small screwdrivers and open it up. It took me about half an hour just to work up the courage to yank off the outer casing. I didn't want it to break. Anyway I got it down to circuit boards and pried off the wheel eventually. And sure enough, the grippy part of the wheel was loose and floppy and altogether bad.
I cleaned it up a bit (lots of gunk floating around it) and put it all back together. But it was even worse after being poked and prodded. So today I opened it up again (it took about 1 minute this time), cut off the offending grippy circle and stuck a new piece of grippy rubber on with superglue. And oh my god, it's like super-duper-extra-responsive scroll wheel. It's like having been crawling and now I'm flying. Everything goes up and down so fast.
I kinda love that I fix things. I don't think that happens much any more. People tend to take the easy route and throw the thing out and buy a new one. But I love fixing things, and even more when I make them better than they had been.

January round-up

Not much happened in January. I think the highlight was skiing in the middle of the month. We headed to Sunrise, me with the hopes of taking up skiing and actually managing to make it down a slope that wasn't the beginners area. I've never managed it with snowboarding (all of twice I've tried it) because stopping on a snowboard is hard and I don't like it when I can't stop (also the reason I've never gotten good at rollerblades).
So my hope came true. By the end of Sunday I could wend my way down the hill with only a few stops to get past the most steep bits or to get myself in a good position to go across them. And now I'm conflicted. Because I got on well with skiing I want to try snowboarding again - because the slope in sunrise is very learner-friendly. But at the same time I feel I should stick with skiing until I can do parallel turns. We're thinking of going this weekend again, but I get the impression I'm the only one who really really wants to go.

What else happened? I made 2 t-shirts. I had a bunch of them from PAX which were too big for me so I cut them up and made them into t-shirts with raglan sleeves. I'm pretty proud of them. So of free t-shirts from PAX, one is a bodice and two are still t-shirts, but different.

I've come to a grinding halt with Altaran (aka book 2). I have no idea how to make act 3 work out the way I want. I don't really even know what the way I want is. So I'm going through what I've written and sorting out what happens (yes, I am pretty fuzzy because, while I had a plan, I made a lot of the story up as I went along) to see if I can draw a good (dramatic, tense, satisfying) ending from it all.

I think that was pretty much January. We're thinking of going to D&D encounters again. A new story is starting on Wednesday. I've been playing Neverwinter Nights and my head is filled with D&D. For the first time ever, I actually get how a bunch of rules I never understood before work (like identify and the difference between spot and search). Of course, it is 3rd ed rules, but oh well. I should just play Pathfinder instead.

Right. I think that's mostly that.