It's been a while, I know. Unfortunately, that's how life has been for far too long now. I have about 6,000 words written of the next chapter and the rest planned out ages ago. So why is it not up yet?

Health is the first reason. I've had to have something unpleasant done at the local hospital; I've been to the dentist; and I've had problems getting a new pair of glasses. Each of these has involved me in walking into town (~ 2 miles) and sometimes catching connecting buses. The hospital visit involved about 15 minutes treatment but lasted almost all day because of "a new computer system". The glasses were botched and I'm awaiting a call to say the third attempt at a pair will be ready... that will be six visits to the optician in total.

Now, bearing in mind I have Fibromyalgia, which is not unlike Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, plus the weird weather we've had lately, and a picture begins to emerge. Yes, I'm completely trashed. You know that advert with the Duracell bunny? Me, I'm just like those other bunnies at the moment. I'm not sleeping too well either and also have a chest infection. Fun days.

The second reason that I basically vanished for a week was that I had evidence that at least one of the nine computers in the house was being accessed by Russians. Now, I have nothing against most Russians but that was taking it a bit too far. By a process of elimination - switching each beast off overnight then examining the firewall records - I narrowed it down to the master server - of course.

To do anything about it I had to purchase another hard disk, swap that out for one in another server (don't ask) and use the freed-up disk to install a whole new system on. That process is still going on. While I was doing that there was basically no internet access for several days.

Now I'm at least back on-line I still have to find all those passwords my browser had saved and re-enter them. I still have a ton of data to migrate over and the new OS is different to the old one, so I'm having to learn a whole new way of doing things as well.

Enough of the geek talk. Assuming I can at least stay awake long enough I'll get right back to what I want to do most and that is to write. In Alaesia things are just beginning to get interesting and I'm as curious as you must be to find out what will happen next.

Sorry to keep you all waiting,

Penny