The Back-from-Vacation Slam

I don't need to explain it to you, right? Most of you have taken a week-long vacation (mine was in Williamsburg last week, so I had a good excuse for the blog silence—for once :) ) and come back to have all of the tension you've relaxed away hit you harder than ever. If you're lucky, it's only ten-fold. If not, it's a hundred.

I've been cranked up to a thousand.

The good news: I finished line edits on Under the Moon and sent those to my editor, and submitted a requested manuscript elsewhere. I have a cover for Behind the Scenes, and should soon get the final JPGs so I can post it.

The challenge: Juggling writing one manuscript and revising another with working extra hours and keeping up with client work. While handling soccer practices, the start of school in a week, and half a dozen appointments for the kids and myself. Head down, keep going until everything is done, on time. Ready set go.

But you're not here to listen to me whine about good things! Deadlines and client work and extra hours are good things! They sure beat rejections and unemployment, for pete's sake.

Unfortunately, deadlines and extra hours leave me precious little to talk about here. *thinks*

Okay, some of the usual fallbacks:

We saw Captain America on vacation. I was so happy the timing worked out so I didn't have to go to the Glee movie with the kids. I like Glee, but I don't need Gleemersion. The kids liked it more than they expected.

I loved Captain America. Well, I found the overly skinny CGI distracting. Ditto with the overly buff CGI. Once they padded Chris up instead of sticking his head on another body, it all worked a lot better. But other than that, I liked the story a lot, and loved Howard Stark and the Red Skull. The ending wasn't what you'd expect or even want if the movie were stand alone, but knowing it's all setup for The Avengers made it okay.

And hey, if you haven't seen it yet, stay after the credits. We were the only ones in the theater who did. I was all, "seriously?" They were obviously not even semi-dedicated fans. All these movies have a quick scene at the end. Maybe they didn't like those. Maybe they thought finding Thor's hammer at the end of Iron Man 2 was lame, or that Loki being alive at the end of Thor wasn't worth the wait. But this one was so worth it. They had a trailer for The Avengers, and OhMyGod, I don't know if I can actually handle watching that. All those superheroes in one room? Tony Stark and Thor and Captain America? *shiver*

Many of my summer shows are done already. I miss Auggie. Like, a lot. But I'm loving Haven, even though, really, all of my enjoyment is wrapped up in the anticipation of something happening between Nathan and Audrey. I just want to see that look on his face when she touches him. And she's so oblivious! It's not just that, of course, the mystery is intriguing, and the Troubles they come up with are clever. This show will hold me into the fall. Especially since I won't have any time for TV!

I can't say I'm liking Torchwood as much as I have in the past. There's way too little emphasis on Torchwood itself, and too much on the horrors of no one dying. I'm two episodes behind, so I don't know if that changes. I hope so. That's a lot of money for a show we don't like.

So that's pretty much all I've got! What about you? Comments on these things, or other entertainment that's been filling your summer? How was your vacation?