Home again home again, jiggety jig

I'm back. I'm alive, and my children are too.

And yesterday, I had a great signing at Barnes and Noble up in Round Rock (here are a few photos Melissa, who baked muffins -- muffins! -- and brought them to the signing, sent me). Lots of people showed up, we sold out of Murder on the Rocks in the first twenty minutes, and had only one book left when it was all said and done.

The first is with Frank Campbell, who's the incredibly friendly and wonderful Community Relations Manager -- then there's one of Melissa, the muffins, a Cozy Chicks bag, and me, and the gorgeous teenager in the third is Grace (M's daughter). Next time, I promise to try to have action shots, incidentally.

I have a few other photos, too, including one of a delightful little girl named Shelby Jo, but my camera is acting up, so I'll just be thankful that Melissa was on the ball.

At any rate, we did survive San Diego, even though I bashed my head on a helicopter the last day and it still hurts. We got in late Friday night, which could be why I look a bit peaked in the photos. I got up Saturday morning to write, which didn't help -- but I added back in some of those words I'd cut, so I'm a very happy writer now. (As predicted, no writing got done last week.)

Here in Austin, it's bright green and balmy, and spring is in full glory; the bluebonnets are an indigo carpet, with splashes of orange Indian Paintbrush tossed in here and there, the wisteria is perfuming everything, and the spiderwort (weird name, pretty plant) is everywhere. I love Austin in the spring -- in fact, as much as I enjoyed San Diego, coming home was almost the best part. I love it here, I do. Except maybe in August. And July. And September, come to think of it...

Anyway, as I traipsed around the lake today, I was thinking about how Natalie Goldberg once wrote that different cities are her 'angels'. I think Austin is definitely mine. My spiritual center seems to be the trail around Town Lake -- if I'm feeling at all out of kilter, a three-mile-walk will put things back on course. Oh, and the cliff swallows are back -- they leave every October, then come back in March to build their little mud-jug nests under the MoPac bridge. And a Carolina Wren family is nesting in a tin bucket on a shelf outside our sliding glass door; when I peeked into it last night to see if there were any eggs, a rather rumpled looking mommy bird darted out. I don't know who was more startled!

I'm off now, for a party to celebrate my hubby's accomplishments (he was just offered partnership at the architecture firm he works at and recently finished the grueling AIA certification gauntlet), and plan to drink many margaritas.

How's everyone out there?

How's the writing going? (Or not going, as the case may be?)

And also, out of sheer curiosity, what cities are your angels? And why?

Ta for now... it's good to be back!