We’d planned to go out to a big costume party, but at the last minute Kate decided she really wasn’t up to it. We wound up watching De-Lovely, a much sadder film than either of us had recalled (though excellent and quite touching), eating popcorn, and turning in right at midnight. A quiet finish to the old year.

Today we’ll be attending a couple of New Year’s Day brunches, one of which marks the 27th anniversary of the New Year’s Day brunch at which we met, and I swear I will begin drafting my new novel (even though I did not write the outline last week as I had intended to). I can write the first thousand words without an outline, ferpitysake.

But first, a little blog-maintenance coding. God help me, I just wrote this AND UNDERSTAND IT: sed -e ‘s;\([[:punct:]]*\)<[Ii]>;_\1;g’ -e ‘s;</[Ii]>\([[:punct:]]*\);\1_;g’