My writing student is home on holiday from college, so we spent the afternoon and evening together. For a while now, I have been hankering for someone to watch both Elizabeth movies (the ones starring Cate Blanchett). I had not seen the second, but did not want to do so until I could watch/study the first. K happily obliged me, being as interested in English history as I.

For dinner, I introduced her to Panera Bread's Fuji Apple salad. Truly, it is the perfect salad. Tart. Sweet. And whole pile of chicken. [Just writing this I am already looking forward to having another as soon as i can manufactured something to celebrate by heading back there.] We also had muffin tops for dessert.

The movies were engaging, though sad. To be queen might have meant power and privilege, but it also meant a rather lonely life. Who loved her as a woman, a friend, not a queen? To be queen, for her, also meant being surrounded by intrigue, political minefields, and repeated attempts on her life. Yet she heralded such a profound and radical shift in society. To live as she did and accomplish that is remarkable.

K and I also wrote together, focusing on editing a particular piece.

Lately, in her work and mine, has come the intriguing challenge to fully answer a question with severe word or character limitations. I travel the path of getting the whole answer on paper (screen) and then reduce from there. Sometimes, the reduction comes in the form of a ruthless hack job, everything is fair game. Other times, it is a matter of finding words throughout the piece that you can essentially do without--articles are the best part of speech for this. You weed. You delete. You hack. Despite all that removing of text, you still must hold on to the heart of your piece and leave your reader satisfied. A daunting, yet exhilarating task.

'Tis such an unalloyed pleasure for me to write--even more so when in collaboration with a talented wordsmith.

Needless to say, I enjoyed the evening immensely.

What was the icing on the cake, you ask? A video call by Bettina! After enjoying her infectious, beautiful smile for a while, we squeezed in a Scrabble game. Despite the fact that I had mostly dismal letters and fell victim to Bettina's extraordinarily fine mind yet again, I still enjoyed the game. This evening could not have been more perfect...save for breaking down and having a second Dr. Pepper with lemon in it!