A big week in the skies above.

Cue the fanfare: We have a launch date (kinda sorta) for Kindle Vella. It will debut sometime in mid to late July -- next month, in other words -- and The Atherton Vampire will be available for your reading pleasure on your iOS device (or from Amazon's website) then. 

Once you've raced through the first ten episodes, there will be three new episodes per week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

I'm so excited. I can't wait for y'all to meet Jerry and the gang.

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Yurumi | Deposit Photos

There I was, scrolling through the Father's Day posts on Facebook earlier today and noticing that several folks had posted about the summer solstice. "Y'all are a day early," I said aloud. "Litha is tomorrow." I knew that, see, because every year when I get a new wall calendar, I mark the dates for the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days. And my calendar clearly says the solstice is tomorrow. 

But then I looked up the time the solstice actually occurs, and guess what? For North America, it's tonight. Time zones are stupid.

I'm doubly annoyed because I've booked a session in a salt cave, and I set it up for tomorrow because I thought it was the solstice. I've never done halotherapy before. To be honest, I'd never heard of it until I picked up a flyer about our local salt cave. Here's how it works: a machine pulverizes salt and aerosolizes it in a very dry room; then you sit in the room and breathe in the salt air for a certain period of time. It's supposed to be good for everything from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder to allergies to depression. I don't really expect it to improve my allergies and I don't have any of those other things, but I figure sitting for forty-five minutes in a room in the dark ought to be good for something, salty air or no. I'll report back.

The equinox isn't the only big celestial event this week; the full moon is Thursday and Mercury retrograde ends Tuesday. I will be very glad to see Mercury go direct -- I've been champing at the bit for the past several weeks, itching to make some changes here at home and waiting for things to get moving so those changes could happen. I'm not saying Mercury retrograde has caused the delays, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't helped.

In any case, it feels like things are breaking free here, including in relation to the virus. Our governor announced Friday that New Mexico has fully vaccinated 60 percent of the population, ages 16 and up, and that means all COVID-related restrictions will be lifted July 1st. Some businesses may still require people to mask up indoors, and of course the CDC guidelines haven't changed. Variants are still a concern. And for unvaccinated folks, infection rates are still as awful as they have been all along. But to this fully vaccinated individual, it feels like liberation.

Here's hoping the rest of the world will soon feel the same way.

Happy solstice! Blessed Litha!

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These moments of anticipatory blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!