Yesterday was my birthday! I'm officially 26 now. I'm not sure if that's cause for celebration or a good boo, hiss and a cry. It's that time of the month for me, if you haven't guessed and I'm having wild mood swings. I've never experienced moodiness quite like this.

At the left you see a picture of my birthday present. The desk was one I used in high school, but it had never been fully put together. We refinished it and assembled it. I love it. We just got it set up yesterday. My laptop is a bit too tall to sit on it, so to use it I must hang it off the edge a bit.

My other present was a opal necklace. Eleven marquis cut, and one round opal arranged to look like a butterfly. It's beautiful! I'll get a pic up in one of my next entries. I got it completely by surprise. While James and I were staying the couple of nights at the B & B (which was wonderful, by the way, if you're ever in Pine Bluff, AR, stay at Margland B & B), we went to the Pines Mall. I just had to walk through Zales and look at all their opals and sapphires. They had this very unusual pendant shaped like a butterfly and I asked James if I could get it. He, to my surprise, said yes. :) It's the second most expensive piece of jewlry I own (my wedding ring being the most). Nothing else I have comes close to the price of either.

Several weeks ago, Amazon.com sent me notice that Stephen King's book was about to be out and gave me the opportunity to pre-buy it. I'd heard a lot recently about his accident (if I'd heard about it at the time I'd forgotten it). One of the things I heard was that he bought the van which hit him and busted it up with a baseball bat. This struck me as soo funny that I wanted to know more about him. I haven't read many of his books (Through the Eyes of the Dragon, and A Green Mile I believe are the only two), but do enjoy the movies based on his books. I think I've seen most of them (I fell asleep during The Green Mile and I'd like to see it again). I read over a hundred pages in the first day. It's very good.

My goals are to get back to work soon. I'd like to get out of this mood before I do, so maybe next Monday I'll get back to working on a schedule. I have a lot of free time now. The only 'work' which I have scheduled is on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I'll be picking up the two kids I babysit at school and watching them for two hours. On Thursdays (starting next week), I'm going to start helping a friend with her girl scout troop (exciting, huh?). So, I'm planning to block about 3 hours a day for working on writing at least 4 days a week. I'd like to break that up into these parts: 1 hour of writing, 1 hour reading on the craft or brainstorming, 1 hour editing. Of course I plan to be flexible. If I'm on a roll of writing I'm not gonna just stop because my hour of writing is up. But, I do need to spend more time in edit mode.