We’ve had some violent storms this past week. Heavy rain (which we needed), violent lightening and rolling thunder accompanied by strong winds and one confirmed tornado in the area. We were in a drought situation. The winter was the mildest in recent memory and this spring, before last week, had been dry as well. Now we have several local rivers near or at their limit.

The storms did some minor damage in our area. I found a piece of a shingle that might have come from our roof, but I haven’t found any bare patches yet. Our neighbors weren’t so lucky. About a month ago they built a fence around their backyard. They don’t have a fence anymore. Half of the fence was ripped out of the ground and layed flat. It looks to me that they might not have dug the fence posts deep enough, judging from the cement at the bottom of the posts I saw. They were pulling down the rest of the fence yesterday, so I don’t know if they’re going to rebuild it or hire someone to do it.

On the writing front, I’m more than a third of the way through revisions on Shaken, Not Stirred. I’m hoping to finish the edits today sometime and have a copy ready for Dena when she gets home from Minnesota tonight. I want to finish polishing it up and have it in the mail by Friday. Now I need to work on my cover letter to Analog. Once this story is submitted, I’ll keep working on Mirror, Mirror, now that I’ve finally worked out where I wanted tdo go with it.

My free time has been scarce the last couple of weeks. Work has picked up, with one new system being deployed this week and another new system to be designed and written next. The switch from maintenence mode to development and back again continues. The current active development cycle will go for another five or six weeks, and then things will relax again as I shift into maintenence and upkeep for awhile. I’m really looking forward to hiring someone that I can delegate some of the work to, so these development cycles aren’t such a panic.