I am four days into summer vacation (and, no, I am not so anal that I keep track of how many days I have left, although I happen to know there are 69 days left), and each day has gone differently so far. But let me give you an overview of what a “typical” day of summer vacation is like for me:

7:30am. Wake up. I do not need an alarm clock for this, since I rarely sleep more than 7-7 ½ hours per night.

8:30am. After breakfast, usually a bowl of granola with fruit, I move to the computer where I spend the morning working. The first hour I usually write my daily journal, my semi-weekly blogs, reply to correspondence, loc (“letters of comment”) fanzines, etc. The next 2½ hours are spent working on “serious” writing, either the nonfiction, book, some fiction, or VoP.

12:00noon. Lunch. I am the leftover consumer of the family, so lunch usually consists of remnants of dinners from previous nights. I am very fortunate that nobody else in my family particularly likes leftovers, since I love them!

1:00pm. Afternoons are more flexible than mornings. Three afternoons I go to the YMCA. Other days I shop (either at the supermarket or the local farm store), vacuum, or do some math competitions (for fun and brain exercise). Usually by mid-afternoon I’ll take an hour break to read fiction.

4:30pm. Time to cook dinner, which I really enjoy doing. During the school year I make fairly reliable stuff, but in the summer I often try more offbeat stuff. One day this week I made a new recipe of pasta with garlic, olive oil, bread crumbs and green beans. It was absolutely delicious, and my family enjoyed it as well, but several of them had one immediate question: where’s the meat? I guess we won’t be eating many vegetarian meals this summer!

6:00pm. I usually spend another hour or two on the computer continuing my work from the morning. Afterwards I’ll play some guitar (I am so bad I am the anti-Eric Clapton), do my abs exercises (which have really improved my back the past few years), then read for a few more hours. Not all fiction this time, since I’ll join the rest of my family in the rec room for awhile, during which I do lighter magazine reading. I’ll also go back to the computer to do a bit of IM chatting with one of my friends later in the evening. [And, yes, I would love to see more of you guys online some of the time, too!]

11:30pm. Good night, see you tomorrow.