Hard to have icy death potential with no ice.

I have the weirdest feeling that I can't finish a draft of The True Tale of Carter Hall until the hockey season starts. I have no rational basis for this. It's just this feeling I have.

What I'm wondering is: with all the other stuff that's gone on in my life this year, should I push on that and try to disprove it? Should I work on another novel until the season starts? Should I just write a metric buttload of short stories? Should I work on what I feel like working on, as I feel like working on it, and see what happens?

This thing where all the goals and deadlines are internal: it sometimes gets kind of weird. I am a great deal more comfortable when I'm working on a novel and therefore have a place where my work goes by default unless something else comes up. But I'm not sure if I should just go with that or try to keep my brain from falling into ruts. So I am thinking thinky thoughts about it.

(Note for non-hockey fans reading this: the Wild's season opener is September 15. So we're talking about what I am doing for less than a month, not for, like, six months or something.)

Maybe I should watch Whale Rider again and see if that helps. (My initial charmed reaction to that movie was, "They're like us! But the water's liquid!")

Mexican vegetables good in Mexican food, and other stunning revelations.

The first two tomatillos from markgritter's garden were ripe. They were smaller than the ones I've gotten at the store, so there was just barely enough tomatillo for two tacos, one for each of us. (timprov's sleep schedule is just barely offset enough that he was not around for dinner. We did not stiff him on the tomatillos.) Verdict: really awfully good on the taco. And the bit I had off the taco was mighty fine as well.

Our cucumbers are pretending to be zucchini in their level of fruitfulness and multiplication, though....