Tidings from the Sauna

Today I feel much more cheerful, even though it is at least 33 degrees in the shade.

I've been thinking that I was too decided in saying that I don't want a job except if I'm a big financial drain otherwise in the last blog post. It is, after all, a very important question what one wants to do with the rest of one's life. But, if I get a job, I want to feel qualified for it and I want to feel excited to do it.

Anyway, I'll write more tomorrow, if I haven't melted.

P.S.: I'm writing another story, essentially identical to Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, but a lot less sentimental and dramatic. The heroine, Constance, is about to set forth from the subalpine village of Vaulieu to the subalpine village of Valmont, but stop at the house of the Beaumont family. She will encounter robbers along the way, who will let her pass with all her money out of chivalry (i.e. I am also ripping off the tales of Robin Hood). This may sound dramatic, but I am sure that my writing will make it boring. I have not yet decided why Constance embarked on her impromptu walking tour; the classic thing would be to have a disagreeable suitor waiting back home, but the idea doesn't appeal to me. The Mysteries-of-Udolpho solution to the problem would be that pernicious relatives kicked her out of the house as soon as her parents died -- I don't like that idea either, though. I should, by the way, find a village name that does not start with "V." I like "Valmont" a little better, so "Vaulieu" will probably go.