Two weeks have fled the calendar: two weeks in which I seem to have accomplished very little. I find myself discombobulated (is it possible to be combobulated, do you think?) and strangely unwilling to knuckle down to tasks that need doing; an after-effect, I expect, of having spent five months away. There is a mess of papers on the kitchen table that glowers at me when I walk by, so I avert my gaze. Now and then I feel guilty, so I shuffle the components around a bit and divide them into piles, but they keep telling me that's not what's needed. I refuse to acknowledge that they really do have to have Things done to them, so the papers and I are engaged in a Mexican standoff.

When I arrived home, I found several books waiting to be reviewed, largely from Hachette Livre who have recently set up shop in Australia under the Orbit banner. Two of them found homes with other reviewers, and I have just uploaded one of the others, which I reviewed myself. It is Feast of Souls by Celia Friedman, an excellent tale of magic and despair. Now I'm reading Dr Whom (subtitled "ET shoots and leaves"!) by A.R.R.R. Roberts. You will gather from the title that it is a spoof on all things speculative and many things linguistic:-) I should be able to get the review on line sometime this week.

At the same time, I have also been at least a bit active on the Family History front. I received lots of new information from cousins old and new while I was travelling and there were also several requests for information clogging up my inbox on my return. I think I've dealt with most of those now and am a fair way through entering the new info into my data base. I currently have a collection of 21,877 relations, most of them dead. I keep telling myself "Enough, already!" but then someone will send me a new and intriguing line to investigate and I'm off again. It's awful, loving lots of things. I've never been able to give up any of my favourite activities, with the inevitable result that I've become a jack-of-all-trades. I long to get back to my writing, but it will have to wait until I've finished entering the rest of the Dead Rellies. And, of course, dealing with that ominous paperwork:-(