A warm fic rec

Someone who signs herself Inverarity, and who seems to be a first-time writer, is publishing a really first-rate American variant on the Harry Potter mythos, called "Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle" (http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/inverarity/AQATTC.html). The story is definitely in the HP tradition, but interestingly varied, with a sparky, spiky female heroine, a powerful and scary female Dean (headmistress), an addictive plot, and beautifully designed local colour up the wazoo. I have become more or less addicted to this story, and I recommend it to everyone.

I'm back from my holidays. I'll tell you about it when I have downloaded some of the photos I took. (I'm no asakiyume or solitary_summer, but if I cannot take interesting pictures in Rome, where can I take them?)

Incredible

Now, as my friends may have heard, I am fat. And I mean really quite fat. FAT. Fat as in "my stomach enters the room ahead of me" fat. Sidney Greenstreet fat. Orson Welles fat.

However, in the last few months I had begun to steadily lose weight by the simple expedient of only eating while I was hungry. I will not tell you how much my top weight was - I am a bit sensitive about it still - but I will tell you that I shed five kilos in three months, and that in spite of the huge frustrations I suffered last year. (My eating is mostly a reaction to frustration.)

Then came the Christmas season. A Christmas season in Italy. Visiting friends and relatives nearly every day, and being visited, and on each occasion a special meal. And on every occasion so damned good it would have been a sin to refuse it. I was relieved that, during these three weeks, I had no access to scales.

Now I have come back. And I found my scales waiting for me. I ignored them for a while, but I got a feeling that they were grinning at me.

So I clenched my teeth. Ready for a humiliating experience, I stepped on them.

And I found that I was nearly a kilo lower than my lowest estimate last year.