First Day of Term (Mist and Mellow Frightfulness)

Well, this morning dawned distinctly autumnal, so I didn't mind going to werk -- well, a werk meeting in Bury St Eds -- at 9am instead of heading back to the beach. Even though beach yesterday was (a) nigh perfect (b) very good for my lungs: peak flow is back up to 75% of what it should be (~60% of personal best). (GP tomorrow, x-ray results, moar steroids mebbe.)

Achieved so far today:
- get up before it was properly light
- preparation for werk meeting
- assemble smart outfit for werk meeting in warm weather
- drive to werk meeting, arriving within 5 mins of schedule.
- engage brain
- take delivery of a great deal of badly-formatted, unclean* data
- ask pertinent questions, probably
- drive back from werk meeting along country lanes, thus avoiding A14 tailbacks
- take delivery of £100 of M&S werkwear
- check in with new boss and assure her all is in progress

Not achieved so far today:
- close benefit claim: all their lines are busy, all the time.

Plan:
- sit on balcony with cold drink
- build database
- close benefit claim

Werking from home all week, yay!

*and bestiall and untaughte

Story link: 'Eight Miles' -- Sean McMullen

Following a discussion with groliffe about the perils and problems of winnowing out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to online fiction, I'm aiming to post a link a day to good short stories available, at no cost, online.

Your starter:
Eight Miles, by Sean McMullen. Steampunk! Mars! Werefoxes! Hugo nominee! I like this a lot.

Consider a journey of eight miles. One could walk it in less than an afternoon, in a carriage it would take an hour, or one could conquer the distance in one of Stephenson's steam trains in fifteen minutes or less. Set two towers eight miles apart, and a signal may be transmitted by flashing mirrors in less time than modern science is able to measure. Eight miles is not all that it used to be, yet seek to travel eight miles straight up and you come to a frontier more remote than the peaks of Tibet's mountains or the depths of Africa's jungles. It is a frontier that can kill.