I'm Tired, I'm Sleepy, and I'm Behind Schedule

Chickie returns next week so today is my final day of kitty care (hurrah!). Taking care of Sasha-kitty isn't difficult, but it's one more thing to interrupt my morning schedule. As a result, I am off schedule this week for my Ardor in August story (due soon) and need to really dive in next week with both feet and the computer working hard to catch up.

The raven of doom is croaking. Time is running out! 

I don't join the "Ardor" challenges (there are three of them each year) unless I feel confident I will meet the deadline. I have no doubt I will, but as always, I want the quality of work to be good and I rely on time to edit and edit and edit yet again. Without that time built into my schedule, I find errors after the fact that I just kick myself for. If it was a published book, finding and correcting the errors would constitute a first edition and a corrected second edition. But it's an e-story, so I usually don't bother revising unless the error is huge. So my mistakes and poor writing skills are entrapped in the ether for everyone to read forevermore. I hear Poe's raven croaking as I write this.

The first prompt is for swan. Although there is the
beautiful swimming swan, I'm finding my thoughts
moving more toward the aggressive swan. These
birds are large. I'd be quite intimidated if one was
charging me. 

Birds seem to be hanging over me. After I finish the series of prompts for my Gilraen drabbles, I'll start in on another series which have been featuring birds. The first prompt of this series was for swan. There have been some cute takes on it, but I thought I'd share a picture of a swan closer to what I'm thinking will be my end result.

The common nightingale is a rather plain-Jane looking bird, but
it is renowned for its large voice. It's rather cute, isn't it? 

The next prompt in the series is for a nightingale. This bird is celebrated for its voice, not its looks. It is not a flashy-looking bird, but oh, that voice. I'm not sure what direction these drabbles will take yet (one project at a time, after all), but it should prove interesting at any rate.

Tomorrow I can sleep and I'm already looking forward to it.
Pathetic!

But, in the meantime, I'm really tired. This is the final day of my six-day work week and my body is aching. My productivity was high at the start of the week, but has fallen down over the past day or two. I'm disappointed to realize that I'm just not as young in body as I used to be and can't recover as quickly.

We're finally starting to hit some mountains on Stage 8.  Although the
stage organizers are calling this a "Hilly" stage, not a mountain
stage, it's still got a nice, impressive end on the top of a Cat 3 climb. 

Le Tour Stage 9 is also called "Hilly" (apparently the "Mountain" stages
don't happen until stage 10). It certainly looks rather mountainous in
the stage profile, though. No HC mountains, though, so
maybe that's part of their distinction. But we're in the Alps, and all is good! 

Stage 8 of Le Tour de France is going on today, with Stage 9 on Sunday. Since I don't post on Sundays, I'm putting both stage profiles up here for your reference over the weekend. The riders are leaving the flat lands behind them for a few days and riding into the Alps. We'll see lots of very pretty mountains for the next few days, culminating with Monday's "Mountain" stage. Then, after ten days of vicious riding, they will finally get a rest day.

Enjoy your weekend and I'll be back on Monday.