Today is my birthday, and I’m celebrating it by being at work. Actually, I chose not to take the day off because next week I will be in North Carolina working on my manuscript. With the holidays fast approaching, I need to conserve my vacation time. I did open up my gifts from my wife before work this morning (great gifts: some clothes, a gym bag, a watch, and a bookcase for my stacked books on the floor in the study), and we did go to breakfast at Aunt Sarah’s before work so that I could get my chocolate chip pancake fix. I may try to cut out of work early today if the boss allows it.

Haven’t been doing much writing. I think that I’m conserving my energies for the concentrated effort of next week. I have been reading though: Alison Stine’s chapbook Lot of My Sister, David Lehman’s Evening Sun & When a Woman Loves a Man, and I just received my copy of Ashley Capps debut book called Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields.

In other news, I received a prompt rejection from Pleiades yesterday. I mailed the submission to them around the middle of September.