Birthday week a total loss....

.... as far as writing went I'm afraid. Sometimes Life happens and you just have to go with it and forget about the writing schedule. Anyway, if you are like me, once you actually settle down to writing it's hard to actually stop, so not too worried yet but I do have one short story deadline coming up---this will be a story for submission I forgot I even wrote last year in a sudden response to a news item, and on re-reading , thought it had 'legs'. I have no particular deadline for the second story which is just a revamp of one I wrote , tightening it up a bit . And alas, the BIG story---the cozy I want to complete by March, is still hanging in the closet...i.e. haven't taken it out to read and try on again, nip here , tuck there , accessorize etc :) but I will make a 'stab' at it shortly.

One fun event this week however --one of these 'locked room puzzle' events. A friend and I , at her suggestion (she having done one or two in the past ) to celebrate our respective Aquarian birthdays , embarked on a mission, a la Indiana Jones to solve 4 puzzles that would let us exit a locked tent and more to follow to retrieve a particular gem in an Incan inner sanctum before a volcano blew up in an hour's time. It is my reincarnation you are currently reading as , although we managed to get out of the tent at least--- I knocked down a styrofoam brick wall to find a clue, with Jo completing a wooden puzzle and both of us managing to figure out a large crate-sized Chinese puzzle box---I'm afraid we were both carried away on a lave stream and consumed when the hour was up. To be fair, it was recommended to have 3 players (each tackling a puzzle) but I expect the result would have been the same ---a Charred-lot on a stick ...