Where the Trees Sing

2011-12-23T02:25:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite Khristmas specials starts with the line, "In all this world, there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child." The special is "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus," based on the book of the same name by L. Frank Baum. I love the sense of magic and the feel of a complete, original mythology in L. Frank Baum's version of the story of Santa Claus. It always makes me uncomfortable when Santa Claus mythology is combined with Christian mythology. The two don't really fit together. And while I enjoy movies like The Santa Clause (starring Tim Allen), there is a flippant quality to the mythology in them that isn't satisfying. There is something wonderful and deeply true about the way that the Sesame Street Khristmas special and the classic letter to Virginia in the New York Sun answer the questions behind the idea of Santa Claus, in a sense, by un-asking them. Very zen. Very true. Nonetheless, I do like to see Santa Claus turned into a story that has a mythological wholeness to it.

This is all beside the point, though. Watching "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" with Elaine this Khristmas, I found myself struck by that first line. I'd never paid overmuch attention to it before. I accepted it as a reasonable-seeming concept, although, it in no way spoke to me. Now that I have a child though, I find that it both speaks to me and that I can no longer accept it as reasonable.

There is a great deal that is beautiful in this world. A happy child is a beautiful thing. But, unless you are a human, biased by the drug-like chemicals that wash over your brain to reward you whenever you see happy infants and children, a happy child doesn't outshine all the other things of great beauty in this world.

A sleeping tiger. The flower-like wings of a deadly preying mantis. Waterfalls. Trees. Snowflakes. Grains of sand, greatly magnified. Two cats playing. A Sheltie prancing in the tall grass of a field. Only humans, under the influence of the drugs generated by their own brains, think that a happy child outshines all these other beauties. Without that peculiarly slanted vision, a happy child is merely a piece of all the other natural beauty in the world we live in.

2011-12-13T00:35:00.001-08:00

Elaine asked me to remind her what number comes after thirteen. So, I offered to count with her. We recited numbers together until the mid-thirties, at which point most numbers were accompanied by a break for hysterical giggling. Elaine still doesn't see why we would bother having so many numbers. They're so unnecessary! And therefore comical.

Once we got up to one hundred, Elaine seemed to have the pattern down, so I broke off and let her keep counting alone. Once she reached the hundred-teens, the following conversation ensued:

"Is that all the numbers?" Elaine asked.

"No, it goes on forever," I replied.

"Forever?"

"Yeah, you can count forever."

"But then I won't eat anymore!" she exclaimed.

"You won't eat?" I asked her, baffled.

"If I keep counting forever," she explained in a nearly incoherent burble, "then I won't eat anymore! I have to eat too! And I'll miss school!"

Clearly, numbers are terribly dangerous objects. We really shouldn't keep so many around.

2011-12-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

Arthur C. Clarke is a writer who I found highly influential back in high school. I read his 2001 series, Rendezvous with Rama, Childhood's End, and a massive number of his short stories, even though I wasn't particularly a fan of short stories at the time. The last time I read anything by Arthur C. Clarke, however, was probably more than a decade ago when 3001: The Final Odyssey came out.

I know that many of the books I loved in high school have paled some with age -- others, that I couldn't stand in high school, I've come to realize have profound depth and subtlety. (Such as the entire works of Jane Austen and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin.) In fact, over time, I've come to suspect that I preferred a certain type of 2-dimensional, cardboard character when I was younger. I found them easier to understand. Science interested me more than people, so I preferred authors who wrote about science (Clarke, Asimov) to those who wrote about people.

My tastes have changed some over the years. Deep Space Nine taught me to appreciate politics, handled well. Jane Austen and an excellent college professor taught me to appreciate irony. And I think that simply spending more time on this planet filled with people has taught me to have more interest in the stories of other humans. (Though, I do still prefer animals and aliens.)

All of that said, I have found it extremely pleasant, comforting, and downright restful to revisit Arthur C. Clarke by way of reading The Songs of Distant Earth this week. (A book that I'd never read before.) I don't believe, by any means, that it's his best work, but it's written in a voice that I haven't listened to in many years. And, no matter how much I've changed in the last decade or so, I still find it to be a really wonderful, thought-provoking and thoughtful, intelligent, well-considered voice. The words that Arthur C. Clarke had to share with the world are words worth hearing. It's an amazing treasure that there are still words of his for me to discover so many years after his death.

Arthur C. Clarke, you are still missed.

2011-11-17T09:39:00.000-08:00

Last year during NaNoWriMo, "Write or Die" (http://writeordie.com/) was all the rage. It's basically a box that you can write in, and it will punish you if you stop writing. Depending on the setting, it may punish you by beginning to delete the words that you've already written. Apparently, some people find this motivating. I just find it frightening.

This year, however, there's something that I think really might work. "Written? Kitten!" (http://writtenkitten.net/) is a similar box in a webpage that you write in -- except, this one rewards you with pictures of kittens! I had to test it out, you know, to see the first kitten picture. It turned out to be an old-timey style drawing of a little girl clutching a gray kitten above a Valentine's heart. Excellent motivation! I'll probably try doing some of my real writing in the Written? Kitten! box later, but, for now, here's the 100 words I wrote to earn that first kitten:

Once upon a time, there was a princess named Elaine. She was young and clever. And oh so terribly mischievous! She lived in a house with three loyal dogs and five wise cats. Of all these pets, the one she loved best was Kelly, an orange and black Halloween cat. Kelly's stripes blended from orange through gray to the deepest midnight. So, sometimes when she curled up in a ball to sleep, she looked like a pumpkin. Other times, she would stare at you with her golden eyes, and the black in her fur would shine with the darkness of her heart. For she was an evil cat.

2011-11-05T12:56:00.001-07:00

Watching the word counts go up all around me, as various writers I know tackle the behemoth that is NaNoWriMo, makes me wish that I could be playing that masochistic, addictive game again. However, I've decided that it will be better for me overall if I give NaNoWriMo a skip this year. I've had a very busy year, writing-wise, and I don't think I have the energy for another all-out push at the word count right now. (I already played that game this summer with writing several short stories for anthology deadlines.) I do have a number of projects that I desperately need to make progress on, but I think they'll all be better served by a more fluid, flexible pace.

2011-09-26T23:25:00.000-07:00

By the end of Rainfurrest: I met all kinds of amazing people and had the most fun I've ever had at a con.

I got to be on two panels with Alan Dean Foster, which was a real highlight. And, according to the feedback I got, I was actually good at being on writing panels! (Given my painful shyness and fear of public speaking, that was not something I actually expected.) I really enjoyed telling people about my experiences as a writer and teaching what I know about writing, and a number of people told me that they found my comments on the panels to be insightful and interesting. One man even told me that he liked what he'd seen of my sense of humor on one panel enough that he went right to the dealers' room and bought my book.

Which brings us to "Otters In Space"... After selling a couple copies of it at WorldCon, I was almost out of the box I ordered last summer. So, in a fit of optimism, I ordered an entire second box, and the people at the FurPlanet table were kind enough to agree to carry them for me in the dealers' room. I figured I'd probably sell better than at WorldCon, since Rainfurrest is a much more targeted audience for a book about talking cats, dogs, and otters. However, I never imagined I would actually sell out during the weekend! By the end, I had to find a way to clip a ballpoint pen to my badge, because it was just too inconvenient to keep digging it out to sign copies of "Otters In Space" and the Rainfurrest anthology (which had two of my stories in it) all the time. I'm pretty sure that this is the best problem I've ever had.

On top of all the writerly goodness, though, I really just love going to Rainfurrest. I like wearing my ears and tail; I like carrying around a plush otter or My Little Pony without getting strange looks; I like all the giant, friendly animals who wave at you and give you hugs and bounce around playing. This year, I brought my four-year-old daughter and my mother to keep track of her, and they had a great time too. Elaine chased around fursuiters -- especially a green unicorn and a raptor who had a My Little Pony in his mouth. (She had to inform him that "ponies are not tasty!"; I'm told that he replied that they taste like ice cream.)

The whole weekend was fun and fantastic and I can't wait to do it again next year. I guess, I'll just have to make it all the way down for Further Confusion again this January to make it not quite so long until the next convention. I hope I'll get to see some of the new friends I've made there.

2011-09-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

Let the season of make-believe begin!

We start the fall every year with our annual Talk Like a Pirate Day party. It's mainly an excuse to dress up like pirates and say "Arrrr!" a lot. I mean, sure, we could do that on Halloween, but then we wouldn't have a day for dressing up like The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland or the fairy story centered on a young girl that we've chosen for this year... Anyway, this weekend was especially intense in the make-believe department, because we also went to Fairyworlds Harvest. I wasn't really planning to do costumes for it, but my friend Sarina discovered that she had some child-sized fairy wings and gave them to Elaine. Then, while I was searching Goodwill for Halloween costumes, I found a pair of amazing butterfly wings. Thus, Elaine and I got to spend the day, dressed as fairies, traipsing through the woods. Elaine was given no less than two free wands -- one with crystals and pink rocks on it and the other made from balloons. She was invited to a tea party where she sat on a giant red toadstool and drank mint tea served by a fairy. It was a delightful way to spend the day.

Then, we had our pirate party! Arrr! And we even managed to capture a mermaid and make her dance for us. Arrrr!

Next up in make-believe land: I head north to Rainfurrest this weekend. I will be on nine panels, including a Furry Writers' Guild Meet & Greet and a reading from my own "Otters In Space." The rest of the panels are about the craft of writing. And I will, of course, be wearing my fluffy Sheltie ears and tail the whole time. I'm almost tempted to wear my butterfly wings as well and be a fairy cat, but I think that might be a bit much.

2011-09-07T00:51:00.001-07:00

Apparently, when I get stuck -- as in, make negligible progress for most of a year stuck -- on "Otters In Space," my solution ends up being to stick the main character in a box. Maybe when I'm writing OiS3 and get stuck around the 30,000 word mark, instead of banging my head uselessly against it for a year, I can skip straight to having Kipper hide in a box and keep writing.

2011-08-21T19:42:00.001-07:00

WorldCon is large and serious. There were a few costumes -- ball gowns, Klingons, and fuzzy ears -- but far fewer than I expected. In fact, I felt like I had to wear my own fuzzy orange ears just to help lighten the tone.

The panels and readings I attended, however, were excellent: Cory Doctorow, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Connie Willis read chapters from the books they're working on; Dr. Demento and David Malki (of www.wondermark.com) discussed humor and science-fiction; Jay Lake repeatedly threatened to sing during the Hugo Awards ceremony; and Stanley Schmidt, the editor of Analog, explained what he means by "hard science-fiction" and his philosophy for encouraging promising writers. I don't know if I'll ever succeed in selling a story to Analog, but I learned this week that I've been coming closer than I thought. In fact, when I met Stanley Schmidt at one of the evening parties, he even recognized my name from all the submissions I've sent him over the years. I think I'm still in shock from that. He's been the name written on rejection slips that keep me writing short stories (as opposed to switching entirely to novels) for the last eight years. A mere scribble of ink. Then, suddenly, he was a real human being, leading panels with giant audiences, surrounded by people, and terribly important. But when I had the chance to introduce myself to him... he already knew who I was. Maybe it's silly, but that small amount of recognition really means a lot.

The other high point came when I went to collect my left-over books from the dealers' room. (I sold half of the books I brought with me to the convention!) As the bookseller was handing me back my leftover copies, a young boy -- probably about twelve -- came over to compliment my ears. He transitioned from complimenting my ears to trying to acquire them rather quickly, but I insisted they weren't for sale. As a consolation, I offered the boy an "Otters In Space" bookmark. When he realized that I had copies of the book right there, he asked how much they cost. I could see from his expression that $6 was a little rich for his pockets, but he cleverly offered to trade me a bushy, stripey tail he had. Apparently, he'd already acquired an upgrade tail -- that better matched the ears he was wearing -- during the con, so he didn't want his old one any more. And given that I had ears but no tail, this seemed like a pretty good deal to me. We made the trade and he took off, but moments later he came rushing back for my autograph. I hope he enjoys the book, because he absolutely made my day. Best sale ever.

Now that the con is over, we have one more evening in the surreal land of flashy lights and machines-begging-us-to-gamble before making the long drive back to normal life. Being shy, I have mixed feelings about cons -- they're exciting but they're also overwhelming. Part of me is sad to see the con end, but I'm also looking forward to getting back to my quiet, animal-filled house where I can settle down to working as hard as I can at writing short stories that interest Stanley Schmidt and novels that interest random twelve-year-olds wearing fuzzy ears.

2011-06-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

Things you hear during your day when you have a three-year-old in the house:

"Hey, everybody!!! Four plus two is six!!! Four plus two is six, everybody!!!!"

"I want to be a DRAGON!" (Followed by the child appearing in a dragon costume.)

"Toy Story is an ooooooold movie."

2011-05-09T22:17:00.001-07:00

Elaine loves math.

Tonight, we gave her a bowl of strawberries. As she was arranging, rearranging, and counting the strawberries in the bowl, I saw her realizing something. She tried to voice this complex idea that had occurred to her.

"Three plus three and five plus one..." She said this a few times, clearly having trouble working out the number "six" at the same time as holding the two equations that added up to it in her head. So, I helped her out, offering up the number she was looking for: "Six."

Elaine was delighted to have discovered there are multiple ways to reach a single number through addition. She immediately pulled out her crayons and started making piles to shove together and count -- this is the strategy Daniel taught her a few weeks ago for doing simple addition. Only this time, she was making more than two piles at a time.

After experimenting with all the ways to separate five crayons into different piles and then shove them back together and still have five crayons, Elaine wanted me to teach her how to draw a five. From there, we moved fairly quickly to my writing out sheets of equations like I remember in early elementary school for her:

1 + 1 = 2
1 + 2 = 3
1 + 3 = 4
1 + 4 = 5 etc...

Each time I finished writing out a sheet of about ten simple addition equations, Elaine would get really excited and say, "Oh! Let's read that!" Then she'd read through the page, from the bottom to the top, declaring each of them "a good story" at the end.

Daniel told her that her Grandma Janet, who's an accountant, spends all day adding different numbers together for people, and Elaine was clearly impressed that her very own grandmother has such an important and exciting job. Elaine says she wants to be an accountant too when she grows up. (Of course, yesterday, she said she planned to be a kiwi popsicle when she grew up.) As for tonight, she rolled all the pages of arithmetic up like scrolls and took them upstairs to bed with her, clutching them tightly and insisting that her daddy read at least three of them to her as a bedtime story before she goes to sleep.

2011-04-14T16:33:00.001-07:00

When Elaine wants a treat, she spells out random combinations of letters, hoping to stumble upon a magic password like "C-A-K-E", "P-I-E", or "I-C-E C-R-E-A-M." Sometimes, the combinations of letters she chooses are interesting... Today, in all seriousness, she sweetly asked me for a "P-H-D" and has followed up by stomping about the house declaring, "I want a P-H-D! I want a P-H-D!"

2011-04-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

My three-year-old has discovered the concept of infinity. And strenuously objects to it.

The conversation started with her asking me, "How many numbers are there?" I told her there were infinitely many and began trying to explain that idea. She looked at me like I was a complete idiot who clearly hadn't understood her question. So, she started counting, and, as usual, needed my help after the number fourteen. When we got to twenty-seven, she declared, "That's it. That's all the numbers!"

I told her about twenty-eight.

She tried her assertion again: "THAT's all the numbers!"

We went on like this for a while. (Though, my counting sped up.) When we got up above one-hundred, she started giggling. When we got to two-hundred, she declared, "That's too many numbers! We only need a little bit of numbers!"

So, there you have it. Infinity has been put on official notice. When Elaine takes over the universe, we're scrapping it for a mathematics that's capped at twenty-seven.

2010-11-18T00:37:00.001-08:00

I gave a reading at Orycon this year.

As a member of Broad Universe, I was invited to take part in one of their rapid-fire readings. This is where all the interested members join together to share a room and time slot for a reading, and every member gets a few minutes to take center stage.

The closest I've come to doing a reading before was a few weeks ago. The Wordos get together and read holiday themed pieces of flash fiction right before Halloween, and I happened to have a short enough piece that fit the theme. Now, when I did that reading, I'm pretty sure my hands were shaking badly enough that anyone in the room could tell I was nervous. For the Broad Universe reading, I was determined to keep my hands steady and hide my nervousness if possible. In retrospect, I'm not sure that was such a good idea... My hands stayed steady, but I think that the effort diverted blood from other, more important parts of my brain. For instance, the part that translates visual input from my eyes.

Fortunately, I'd practiced the excerpt of "Otters In Space" that I was reading several times earlier in the day. So, some of it was ad-libbed from memory. However, I could hear the audience laughing at all the right parts. Then, afterward, several people sought me out to tell me how much they enjoyed my reading. One man even sought me out the next day!

Overall, it was an incredibly rewarding experience.

2010-11-14T22:06:00.000-08:00

As I said, the last month has been all about writing. See, Elaine started going to preschool five mornings a week this fall. In honor of finally having a couple hours free every day for the first time in several years, I decided to devote pretty much every free minute I have (and some minutes that are not entirely free due to having a child bouncing around shouting, "Mom! Mom! Look at this!") to my writing. So, I've finished several short stories, and I hit the 30,000 word mark on "Otters In Space 2."

This was, apparently, not enough. So, as November -- and NaNoWriMo -- neared, I suddenly outlined an entirely new novel set in the Otters In Space universe. See, "Otters In Space" was originally started as a NaNoWriMo novel. I figured that no one would ever be willing to publish a piece of hard science fiction a la Arthur C. Clarke starring talking animals a la Brian Jacques. So, why not write it super fast as a NaNoWriMo novel? Except, by 15,000 words I realized I was writing something really special. So, I gave up on NaNoWriMo and gave "Otters In Space" the time and attention it needed to develop its full potential.

This means that 1) I have good associations with NaNoWriMo because I got "Otters In Space" out of it, and 2) I still haven't won!

So, I figured I'd try again this year, and either I'd finally win or at least get a good start. So far, I'm not quite 20,000 words into "Learning to Live and Love in a Dog's World," and it's going very well. I was even meeting my daily word count goals... until Orycon happened... which... of course... is when I burned out on "Otters In Space" in 2005...

Which brings us to Orycon...

2010-11-14T21:39:00.001-08:00

The last month has been all about writing. Writing, writing, writing.

First off, I joined Wordos, the local science-fiction critique group. This is a group I'd heard about since looong before moving to Eugene. Members of this group win Writers of the Future almost every year. Needless to say, I was a little intimidated. So, even though I've meant to check them out since moving to Eugene, I kept putting it off. Then I finished a short story I started five years ago... This is the kind of story that is so complex and neat that it takes that long to write. Now, I don't mean I was working on it that whole time. In fact, I actually wrote the first few scenes quite quickly in 2005. But then I got stuck. I had the entire story outlined, but the emotional depth was beyond my abilities at that time. Then, three weeks ago, I suddenly sat down and over the course of two days hammered out the rest of it.

Needless to say, when you have a short story that is worthy of five years gestation time, it deserves that little bit extra to polish it up super nicely. So, I finally overcame my fear and joined the Wordos. And, I must say, the critiques they gave of that story last Tuesday were extremely valuable.

2010-10-19T12:39:00.000-07:00

Of course, no matter how great the internet is for research, it still hasn't beat pulling out The Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds and The Encyclopedia of the Cat for researching dog and cat breeds.

2010-10-18T13:59:00.001-07:00

A lot of writers say that the first step to making a lot of progress on their writing is to turn off the internet. For me, this is not the case. The internet is an incredibly amazing tool for me when I'm writing, and it can speed the process up a lot.

When I was in high school, I wanted to write a novel that had octopus-like aliens in it. But, first, I needed to really know what octopuses look like when they move. I needed to research octopi. So, I went to the library and checked out all the octopus books I could. This was fun and useful, but it didn't show me an octopus in motion. Next, I convinced my mom to take me to the coast for a day, and we hit every aquarium we could find. At one of them, there was an undersea show where a diver went in to the tank, picked an octopus up, and kind of waved its tentacles around. This made me sad, because it wasn't the octopus moving under its own motion and therefore was basically useless to me. At another aquarium, I stared at a sleeping octopus for three hours straight -- it twitched once. (Come to think of it, it's pretty amazing that my mom put up with this...)

Eventually, we did find a documentary video through an inter-library loan program. But... Seriously! That's a long, slow process for learning what octopuses are like when they move.

These days, if I want to write a story with owls in it, I don't have to drive over to the library, dig through the shelves, bring books home, put a video on inter-library loan, and schedule day trips to zoos and wildlife reserves. I can just type "owl" into youtube, and, WITHIN SECONDS, I'm watching and listening to owls! Within minutes, I'm back at my word document writing my story.

So, if I also spend an extra ten minutes writing a post like this... Well, I'm still coming out months ahead.

2010-10-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

Kitten reorganization time!

This is when you find a kitten sleeping on, say, a couch; pick it up and carry it around until you find a different kitten sleeping on, say, a bed; swap the kittens; and proceed until kitten reorganization time is over.

2010-09-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

There is an entire community of people devoted to pretending that animals can talk. Somehow, in all my years of mourning the end of Watership Down and quietly writing Otters In Space all alone, I never noticed this.

Last weekend, I attended Rainfurrest, up in Seattle. My limited research in preparation suggested that Rainfurrest would be a great deal like any science-fiction convention. Except a lot of people would be wearing animal costumes. In short, that expectation was about right. But... Knowing it and experiencing it were completely different.

The halls were filled with animals. Foxes, wolves, cats, otters, raccoons... Walking around, talking, exactly like people do. Because, of course, they were people. Wearing costumes. But... I can't explain it. I've sat at my computer dreaming about a world where the otters have spaceships for years... And, so, if I found the experience of a furry convention a little magical, I suppose it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

The best part, though, was hearing Phil Geusz -- one of the writing panelists -- talk about the history and future of furry writing. I attended a reading he gave of two of his stories -- one about a rabbit on a spaceship, the other about a boy who convinced a magician to turn him into a horse. I didn't know anyone else was writing stories like that! And, to hear him tell it, we writers of fiction about anthropomorphic animals are at the beginning of an entire movement. He compared furry writing today to the first appearance of Golden Age science-fiction in the late 1930s. I don't know if he's right... But, god, I hope he is. It was incredibly inspiring.

So, now, until the next convention, I will return to quietly writing away. But, this time, instead of being a strange oddity, my work is part of an entire genre. Furry science-fiction. Sci-furry.

2010-09-12T23:32:00.000-07:00

"Ready to be tucked in?" I ask.
"You need to tickle me first," Elaine answers.

Apparently, being tickled to sleep is now part of the nightly routine.

2010-09-09T14:56:00.000-07:00

It makes me a little crazy that Elaine leaves children's books strewn all over the house. I know they're at risk of being eaten by dogs, and it just generally looks like poor treatment of books. Books belong on shelves. Organized. Possibly alphabetically.

However, I noticed that the bookshelf of children's books upstairs was looking a little thin, so I wandered around the house and gathered up an armful of twenty books that Elaine has brought down over the last week. Carrying that armful back upstairs, I was struck by just how many different books this little girl reads every day, even though she can't even read yet.

Although I question the quality of treatment that these books get in her hands, I cannot deny that they are getting loved. I'm so glad we have them.

2010-08-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

Every couple years for about as long as I can remember, my family has gone over to Winchester Bay for a big family reunion with bunches of relatives that I can hardly keep straight, since I don't see them all that often. People gather for breakfast, and each branch of the family takes a turn whipping up pancakes or waffles in a little hotel kitchen. And, most importantly, on Saturday we're all ferried over by boat to an island beach where we cook dinner over a giant bonfire.

When I was about ten, we ate corn chowder cooked over that bonfire, and it was one of the tastiest things I've ever eaten in my life. This year, we ate fresh berry cobbler... And, oh my goodness, berries are meant to be cooked that way.

This year was the first time I feel like I really attended the Brownell reunion as an adult. The last reunion was four years ago... and it was a close call. I'd graduated from college. I was married. Daniel and I were living in an apartment in Seattle with two dogs. By all rights, you'd have thought we were adults. However, the generations mostly kept to themselves -- splitting the "kids" off in their own circle.

This time, perhaps precipitated by the introduction of a new generation (three-year-old Elaine and six-month-old Tobias), that didn't happen as much, and I feel like I got to know a lot of my older relatives a lot better. It was a fantastic weekend.

2010-08-18T00:51:00.000-07:00

You can do amazing things with tape. I know this because my three-year-old leaves books on the floor, and my (very quick) Sheltie likes the taste of them. Together, they've conspired three times in the last week to break my heart by leaving a tattered, chewed up children's book lying, brokenly on the floor for me to find. Each time, I have dutifully gathered up the pieces and painstakingly taped them back together with thick layers of scotch tape or packing tape (depending on which material better suits the particular book).

Each book has survived. And come out looking much better than I expected.

Nevertheless, every time I tape one of those sacred, holy, beloved objects back together, my sadness that they will one day -- soon even -- be utterly replaced by e-books dissipates.

Maybe e-books won't be so bad.

2010-07-24T11:44:00.001-07:00

Guests wont begin to arrive for another hour or two; there's been no cake; she hasn't seen the pinata yet; nothing special has happened at all. But, nevertheless, Elaine's been walking around in a contented daze all morning saying, "It's my birthday party!"

2010-07-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

Elaine had her first tear-free day of preschool this morning. Daniel had no trouble dropping her off, and the teacher greeted me when I came to pick her up with the news that "Elaine had a fantastic day." Sure, Elaine tried to put a sobby quaver in her voice when she saw me and said, "You came back!", like she does every day. But her huge grin kind of spoiled the effect.

Meanwhile, Daniel and I have decided to start taking advantage of the time Elaine spends in preschool this summer to make a tour of nice restaurants for breakfast. We're not usually awake for breakfast. However, it's the one time of day -- while Elaine's in preschool -- that we can easily go to a nice restaurant. This morning I had eggs benedict with salmon. Delicious.

2010-07-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

The world is changing like crazy, and I've been watching and waiting for my chance to jump in. It's scary... But, around last summer, I couldn't take it any more. Somehow, between reading all of Dinosaur Comics (backwards) and watching The Guild's music video, "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar," I couldn't stand working away at my fiction in silence. Sending it out into the void of magazines and editors who send back unsigned form letters or -- oh joy! -- a rejection letter signed with a real ballpoint pen.

Yeah, being a writer can be depressing. So, I invented SPACE HOUNDS! to stave off the dissatisfaction. I have no idea how many people read it (because my attempt at tracking those statistics was bugged, and I haven't figured out how to fix it). But! I can write it and then put it up where readers can see it, if they want to, immediately. And that feels nice. It makes the whole process feel a little less pointless.

However, I'm not really a comic writer. Sure, SPACE HOUNDS! is fun... But my heart always has been in my short stories and novels. And, the common knowledge among writers is that you should never, ever, ever put your fiction up on your website or self-publish in any sort of way. So, I was stuck.

Then, I found out about Peter Watts. I read Blindsight and loved it before discovering the story behind it: Blindsight was dead in the water, so Peter Watts posted it for free on the internet under a creative commons license.

The internet is changing things. But, I still wasn't ready to take that leap for myself. (Because, yes, I'm aware that my situation is completely different.) However, two weeks ago, I discovered the music of Owl City. Yet another success story via non-traditional, internety means. More importantly, though, it was a shot of optimism. Which is what I really needed.

So, the practical upshot? In an act of either manic optimism or desperate despair, I've published my novel Otters In Space: The Search for Cat Havana on Smashwords. I have no expectations. But... I do hope that any people out there who've been wishing they could read a work of hard science fiction starring talking cats, dogs, and otters will find it. I know it would have made me very happy when I was... well... any age. I would love this book at any age.

2010-07-09T12:07:00.000-07:00

Five cats is an awesome number of cats to have.

I brought my half of the wild kittens home two days ago, and we've been keeping them shut in the downstairs bathroom. This way, we're able to introduce the three older cats to the two new cats gradually. Mostly, the older cats have been allowed only intermittent glimpses of the kittens. These glimpses make their eyes widen in a combination of disbelief, horror, and anger.

However, a bit ago, I brought the kittens out to play with the best cat toy ever. A stick, tied to a string, tied to some feathers. I have two of them. And, as the kittens darted about on the couch I'd sequestered them on, chasing and pouncing on the feathers, all three of my older cats appeared around the edges of the room. Imperceptibly, they moved closer, until these three adult cats -- too cool or too lazy to play with feathers themselves -- were all peering directly over the sides of the couch. Watching the kittens. Enthralled.

If you can't see how awesome that is... I probably can't convey it. And, weirdly, based on the average number of cats per household, I'm guessing that most people out there somehow fail to see just how extremely awesome it is to have five cats gathered around one couch, playing with feathers and calculating the complexity of their relationships with each other.

See, a hierarchy of three cats is a very complex thing. (Theresa loves Heidi, but Heidi interprets her love as torture. Kelly thinks Heidi's fear of Theresa's love means that Theresa is dominant and, therefore, beats up on her. But, Theresa interprets Kelly's attempts to prove dominance as a sort of friendship. And, in the end, because none of them have the same motives or priorities, they completely fail to create a simple order of dominance.)

And a five cat hierarchy promises to be even more complex and fascinating.

2010-07-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

Something very strange has happened to me. I've fallen in love with the music of an artist who is younger than me... That may not seem so strange to most people, but I have never before loved music that didn't begin long, long before I was born. Whenever I've fallen in love with music before, the artist behind it has existed in a dual way -- as the talented twenty-year-old who has suddenly been discovered by the world, but also as the weathered sixty-year-old who is making a splash with his latest comeback album. Brian Wilson, the Monkees, Elton John, and even my latest love, They Might Be Giants. Each of them has a current self and a youthful self that is still available to be discovered by new fans, complete with decades of back albums.

But Owl City has only one self. There is no past to go back and discover... He's only starting out. I guess that means there's a lot to look forward to from him? For a science-fiction writer, I am strangely un-used to looking forward.

2010-07-02T15:59:00.000-07:00

I entered some photos in a Pet Day Photo Contest a month or so back, and two of them won prizes. The results from the contest are posted here:

http://oregonstate.edu/vetmed/pet-day/cat-photo

When I heard about the contest, I figured that with years and years of cat photos on my hard drive, I really ought to enter some. So, I dug through and picked out a few of my favorite shots of Heidi and Theresa. (One of those won "Cutest Picture.") However, then I thought that since I haven't really figured out a way to advertise Space Hounds! at all, maybe I should include a picture of Kelly in place of one of the really cute pictures of Heidi and Theresa. I haven't owned Kelly as long -- she's still under a year old -- so, I don't have as many excellent pictures of her yet. She has gotten a lot of camera time for her appearances on Space Hounds!, but those photos tend to be campier. I'm aiming for pictures that tell a good story with silly dialogue written over them -- not pictures that are beautiful in their own right.

Nonetheless, I picked out the best picture of Kelly in her spacesuit that I had, stripped off her line of dialogue ("Fortunately, I'm well versed in the fifth law of thermodynamics!"), and replaced it with a simple direction to the website (www.spacehounds.com).

Which all adds up to me being really surprised that it's the picture of Kelly a.k.a. Kelliah, wrestling with a macro-string on TJ Barker's spaceship, that won "Judge's Pick."

2010-06-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

A conversation with Elaine about why her Auntie M. gets to have a birthday party before she does took an interesting turn:

Elaine: "I was born in July!"
Me: "Yes. And Auntie M. was born in June."
Elaine: "And Daddy was born in computers!"

2010-06-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

We found feral cats living under my mother's deck. One gray tabby mama and four kittens. I was the first to spot a kitten, and I couldn't fit a non-kitten-shaped thought in my mind from that moment on. Unfortunately, I live an hour away from my mother's deck, and I have various responsibilities in my life -- including a rather noisy two-year-old, Sheltie, and spaniel -- that kept me away.

Nevertheless, I waited nightly for news of the kittens. Sunday: confirmation that I had not conjured up imaginary kitten ghosts from the depths of a kitten-deprived mind. Monday: that the kittens were being trained to eat on my mom's deck. Tuesday: a fourth kitten appeared! By Thursday, I could stand it no longer and designed a homemade kitten trap involving an old sheet and a lot of string. The design was classic... cheesy, even. No one who's seen Return of the Jedi would fall for it. But, I figured, these kittens probably hadn't seen that kind of movie.

I sat on the roof, silent and motionless, for twenty minutes before I saw any feral cats, and then it was only the mama. It had been fifty minutes before the kittens even appeared. More than two hours passed before hunger outweighed caution for all four of them. Four kittens, perched around a plastic bowl, on a sheet, ten feet beneath me. I pulled the strings, and the corners of the parachute shot up. The kittens scattered, and their distributed weights tipped the ballooning cloth. Two escaped. Two were caught.

Over the next two days, we managed to catch the final two kittens and the mama with a traditional live trap. (Once any given cat has seen a parachute trap in action, it will never fall for it again.) But, I don't know that I've ever done anything quite so thrilling before as catch myself a pair of wild kittens in a parachute trap.

2010-06-10T16:28:00.000-07:00

Seattle and Eugene both get a lot of rainy weather, but Eugene gets a lot more rainbow weather.

Also, I walked by a garden today that was decorated with small, stone statues of angels. Seen with the eyes of a Doctor Who fan, the angels gave the garden a very neat, creepy vibe. I suspect they weren't meant that way.

2010-05-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

The strangest thing happened today. I was taking Quinn for a walk around the neighborhood. He was just commenting on the unusual density of palm trees around Eugene -- saying that it was almost as if Eugene thought it was California -- when I suddenly realized we were actually in California. I don't know how I'd missed it. One minute, we were walking around College Hill, and the next minute, there we were, in Cupertino. Of course, before I could even catch Quinn's eye to see if he'd seen it too, we were right back home.

Neither of us said much for the rest of the walk, and I think he's still a bit too shaken up to talk about it. It's too bad it couldn't have happened later in the week though -- that sure would save a long drive down to Baycon.

2010-04-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Elaine is watching "The Secret of NIMH" on her computer. She loves the main character and calls her "Name-is-Risby." A few moments ago, Elaine proposed an expedition. She said, "Name-is-Risby is in the movie... Let's go get her!" Then, after holding her hands ineffectually toward her monitor for a few moments, "I can't reach her!"

2010-04-20T09:43:00.000-07:00

Elaine heard me use the word "aurora borealis" and became immediately convinced that such a beautiful word must mean something wonderful to eat. She insisted that I give her one. As I tried to explain what they are, Elaine grew impatient and went to the refrigerator to find them for herself. I clearly wasn't being cooperative.

Failing to find any aurora borealises in the refrigerator, Elaine stood in the middle of the kitchen looking thoughtful. After a moment, she brightened and declared, "I want apricots!' So, I gave her a bowl of dried apricots, and, as she accepted them, she delightedly exclaimed, "Aurora borealises!"

2010-04-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

The thing about burned brownies is: they have a strong, pungently chocolate smell; it's fun to excavate out the good, middle layer; and they're done twice as fast. So, basically, you can't lose.

2010-04-09T00:47:00.000-07:00

I've been playing a lot of Plants Vs. Zombies lately, so I've been thinking a lot about brains. And how they get eaten. One of the ways that brains commonly get eaten is by the "Terrible Twos." See, there is a class of humanoid demon that is about three feet tall, can mimic human speech, and is not deterred by garden perennials. Worst of all, apparently, every child passes through this phase. Now, I'm a skeptic of so-called "Common Knowledge," so I didn't believe in the Terrible Twos, despite having heard about them. Not until last fall. But, then, the toddler ate my brains.

My theory is that every infant must pass through the "Uncanny Valley" -- and that's the Terrible Twos. The Uncanny Valley is an idea from computer animation. In short, there is a scale from cartoony, Disney-like depictions of human beings through the various levels of CGI, up to absolutely realistic images of humans. And, there is a patch on that scale where the depictions become too realistic, without being real enough. That's the Uncanny Valley, and anything that falls there is, really, downright creepy. Because it's eerie to look at something that's almost perfectly human, and, then, suddenly to see something that's off. Something that gives it away. You feel tricked, cheated, and creeped out.

That's what talking to Elaine was like between two and two-and-a-half. She'd babble along quite coherently, and when you'd start talking to her, she'd give completely reasonable responses. Then, suddenly, you'd need to really communicate an idea, and you'd realize she was just spewing random movie quotes. Being the full-time caretaker of a toddler is what having Eliza as a business partner would be like. Highly frustrating.

Fortunately, while zombies don't give your brains back and computer therapist programs don't burst into random sentience, toddlers do get older.

2010-04-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

I have a second-hand garden. It came with my house, and I've been watching the spring flowers come up with a mix of anticipation and mild trepidation. Gardening has always been important to me, and I have strong opinions about my plants. So, for instance, I was excited to see so many daffodil leaves, but, I was somewhat disappointed when they bloomed and were almost all white. I mean... Yellow! That's what daffodils are about right? They're bright, bold trumpets and stars. Sure, a few white or orange daffodils add nice variety, but, in any given mix, a good fifty percent of the daffodils should be yellow. Needless to say, I'll be rectifying that situation before next year. (By adding more daffodils, of course. Not by taking any out.)

On the other hand, now that the daffodils have faded away, my garden is filled with a whole array of colorful tulips -- red, pink, yellow, and purple-striped! Now, if I'd been arranging this garden, I probably wouldn't have planted any tulips at all, because, honestly, I don't really like them. Tulips are kind of... pretentious. While being too simple to truly pull it off. And, yet, if I'd followed my instincts -- and planted tons of daffodils, rose bushes, and not much else -- my garden would be empty now.

So, on the whole, despite the sad lack of yellow daffodils, having a second-hand garden seems to be a pretty fantastic thing.

2010-03-23T02:17:00.000-07:00

I've been rereading one of the very first chapter books I ever read, "The Cat Who Wished To Be A Man." I must have been six, and I know I checked it out from the public library. I remember being in (what I thought of as) the adult section. The shelves were taller there, and the books thicker. In retrospect, it must have been the YA section. And, the copy of "The Cat Who Wished To Be A Man" that I'm reading now is nothing like thick.

When I reached back through my fading memories and pulled out the title of that book I vaguely remembered with a cat begging his master, a magician, to turn him into a man... I had hoped that actually reading the book would pull the memories closer. I thought I might feel a sense of resonance with my six-year-old self while reading it.

Alas, while the overall story is mildly familiar, it doesn't actually feel like a book I've read before. Sometimes, revisiting a book, or a piece of music, or an actual place can take you back -- for a moment, you feel like you're the same person as when you first visited it. But, six-years-old is too far away. The memories I have of this book (although definitely authentic, as I've never talked about it before) don't feel substantially different from false memories I have of my mom's childhood, created by listening to her stories so many times.

I wonder where the tether broke... If I had the time, I might sample re-reading books from different periods of my life, and find out how far back that sense of resonance can stretch. Of course, the experiment would be complicated by trying to remember enough books from different times in my life that felt significant enough to warrant that kind of resonance... And, like I said, I don't really have the time.

Well, perhaps I'll experiment in the other direction: in another twenty years, I'll read "The Cat Who Wished To Be A Man" again, and find out if the tether stretches farther through adulthood.

2010-03-03T15:37:00.000-08:00

There is something magical about taking a square sandwich and turning it into four, smaller, triangular sandwiches.

2010-03-03T13:29:00.000-08:00

One of the best parts of being a writer: being sent the link to a nearly finished anthology that will have one of my stories in it.

Actually, there's been a lot of good bits about being a writer this week. For one, I was asked to write an afterword for the story, "Rekindle the Sun," in this anthology. That was a first. I got to reread "Rekindle the Sun" with an eye towards what it meant to me, and then write a mini-essay about that. Doing so made me particularly curious about what kind of take all the other authors in Belong: Interstellar Immigration Stories had on the theme.

I can't wait to read their stories!

2010-02-18T00:12:00.000-08:00

The times have changed.

I have a bunch of Duplo blocks from when I was a kid that I've kept in a box under the coffee table, waiting for Elaine to show interest in them. Mostly, they're standard rectangular bricks, but there are a half dozen or so "door" blocks. And those are the ones that Elaine extracted a few days ago. I didn't question her interest in them... They are more complex blocks than the simple rectangles.

Then, she handed one to me, saying "You want this computer?" For the first time I looked at the block with the eyes of a child who has been being entertained by computers since she was born, instead of the eyes of a twenty-seven-year-old whose first memories of computers are of boring black-screened CRTs, enigmatically stealing the attention of her father.

And, indeed, the door blocks do look like computers.

2010-01-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

I have commenced a campaign to hook Elaine on Star Trek. The plan is to begin her on all the TNG episodes that focus on small children. For starters -- "Rascals." Her favorite parts were, of course, joining in when Ro and Guinan were trying to jump higher than each other and, also, saying "Ferengi" over and over again.

Next up -- "Rascals." That's how two-year-olds work.

2009-11-27T22:51:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, I was struck by a brilliant idea. I was stuck on my novel, "Otters In Space 2," and I was feeling downhearted about the prospects for sending "Otters In Space 1" around the agent and publisher slush piles out there. So, I thought, why not create something entirely different? Something that can be published straight to the internet (not to be too cliche here, but...) like Dr. Horrible and The Guild? Of course, I have no actors...

Or do I!??!?

Actually, it turns out that I have some very fine actors. Canine actors. And, swathed in duct tape, Trudy and Quinn make some very fine SPACE HOUNDS.

So, I have been very busy, building sets, making costumes, giving my actors some last minute obedience training, and, oh yeah, learning how to use an entirely new piece of photo-managing software. But, the hard work has all paid off, and I am now using my precious vacation time at Orycon to make SPACE HOUNDS! live.

2009-11-07T12:07:00.000-08:00

Elaine checked a book out from the library today. She's seen me do it before, so she apparently had the concept down. We were in the children's section, flipping through a book called "Countdown to Kindergarten," about a girl with a cat who clearly reminded Elaine of Kelly. And, when I said it was time to go, Elaine declared, "Take book home!" So, she brought the book right up to the check out counter and, except for needing to borrow my library card, checked the book out all by herself.

Between inheriting her dad's old computer and learning to use the library, Elaine now has all the tools she needs to learn how to take over the world! Bwa ha ha!

2009-10-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

In addition to general communication skills, Elaine has also been making huge progress on her computer skills. Last week, I started her out on Reader Rabbit. It's fairly different from the little, black and white game I played on my mom's mac as a kid. But it's the same basic idea: educational puzzle games that reward you with music and animation when you get them right. Of course, the puzzles I remember mostly had to do with spelling rhyming words (of only three letters), and they were way too advanced for Elaine.

Now, however, there's a whole sequence of Reader Rabbit games -- starting with one aimed at babies who can't do anything other than uncoordinatedly waggle the mouse and pound on the keyboard. Elaine mastered that one in two days. (Even so, it was an excellent game, as I don't know any other way to teach a two-year-old to use a mouse.) The next level of Reader Rabbit is aimed at toddlers, and it took more like a week for Elaine to master it. Last night, she graduated to the preschool level.

At this rate, hopefully, she'll be ready to play Diablo 3 with me by the time it comes out.

2009-10-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

This has been a big month in Elaine's little world. She started preschool, gymnastics, and a music class like the one she used to take in Seattle. Until I signed her up for all of those, I hadn't realized that she was basically starting school. Four days a week, she has somewhere that she has to be before noon, and, apparently, four out of seven days is critical mass for utterly shifting Elaine's sleep schedule. I don't think I've seen this much of this many mornings since I was in high school.

Elaine's language development has become fairly interesting too. She no longer picks a pronunciation (such as "doot" = milk) and sticks with it, requiring us to learn her code language. Now, she'll switch her pronunciation of tricky words around, trying to get them closer to standard English. This makes her overall easier to understand -- but it was confusing when "doot," which has been constant for about a year, suddenly became "nut" (with an umlaut over the 'u'). Elaine also uses complete sentences; though, her pronouns tend to be backwards. ("She wants more," being her way of asking for more.)

With all of this progress in communication, I've noticed that Elaine now feels different in my memories of recent events. For instance, if I remember that I watched a movie last weekend, and I try to remember who all was there, I might think, "I know there were three of us -- but, I don't think Mom or Molly was visiting... So, that would be me, Daniel... and... Elaine?" See, I'm used to discounting Elaine when counting people, because, until very recently, she hasn't actually contributed to events and conversations like a full person would. Now, in her broken way, she does. It's eerie. A little like the moment in "The Cat From Outer Space," when Jake the cat first speaks to Dr. Frank Wilson.

Now if we can just teach the other Floor People to talk...

2009-10-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

As Daniel headed back to work after lunch today, I told him I might just let Elaine watch movies all afternoon since it's already been a long week. However, despite my worst intentions, Elaine has so far banged on pots and pans, read Green Eggs & Ham, and played with alphabet refrigerator magnets. Now she's talking about going to the park.

2009-10-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

A bigger house requires more cats to be properly cat-saturated than a smaller house. So, since our new house is about a third larger than the house we were renting in Seattle, we needed ~30% more cat after moving here.

A few visits to the local humane society turned up a three-month-old torbie kitten who seemed appropriately intense, intelligent, and independent (for me) as well as mellow (for surviving my dogs, two-year-old, and older cats). I named her Kelly for the classic song "Don't Fence Me In." And, this time, I thought for sure that I'd picked out a kitten that would love me best.

My first kitten -- Heidi -- is too zen to have a favorite human. My second kitten -- Theresa -- is definitely the kind of cat with a favorite person. Unfortunately, Heidi turned out to be that person. For Kelly, that person is Elaine. Yes, the two-year-old. The two-year-old who drags her about by the middle, grabbing her paws and poking her ears while shouting, "Tawry! Hold Tawry!" (That's how she pronounces "Kelly.")

I tried to protect my brand-new, delicate, little kitten at first. Then it became clear that she liked it. She seeks Elaine out. In fact, Elaine and Kelly are so close that getting Kelly is now part of Elaine's bedtime routine. Because Kelly seriously lets Elaine hold her like a stuffed animal until she falls asleep.

2009-09-15T01:27:00.000-07:00

In preparation for Talk Like a Pirate Day, I bought four pineapples. (Both tasty and decorative!) Earlier tonight, Elaine took me by the hand and dragged me into the kitchen where the pineapples are lined up, rather impressively, along the counter. She pointed up at them and declared, "Eat pinecone!"

After I regained my composure, I decided to strike a deal. Now, I wasn't about to cut into one of the fresh, whole pineapples, but I did have a can of pineapple slices in the cupboard. I also had a daughter who until very recently would answer, "What does a pirate say?", with a good, hearty "ARRR!" But with one week until our big pirate party, she had suddenly decided that, actually, pirates say, "NNNNN!" And she has been taking great delight in torturing me with that.

So, I told Elaine, pineapple would be a good treat for a little pirate. Then I asked, "What do pirates say?" She thought about it for a moment, and then she gave me a good, hearty "ARRR!" Apparently, pineapple is more valuable to little pirates than torturing their mothers.

2009-09-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

I've been having an absolutely fantastic time maintaining a yard of my own. It's like playing Diablo -- but even more satisfying. Instead of hacking apart re-animated skeletons and lava monsters, I get to hack apart plant beasts. So far, I've completely shredded three rhododendrons and have severely hacked back innumerable shrubs. (Okay, I could probably numerate them if I wanted to... But, it's much more fun to attack them with sharpened hedge shears than to count them, despite what Sesame St. would have you believe.)

Of course, I've planted things too. Three roses: a yellow one called Radiant Perfume; a pink one called Spellbound; and a white one called Pope John Paul II. Also, two camellia bushes to replace the rhododendrons. (Camellias are much more interesting people than rhododendrons.) But, really, gardening seems to be mostly about fighting plants back as they war to take over your yard. It's epic, really.

My hedge shears are sharp, but the hedge keeps growing!

2009-08-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

Getting a second Sheltie has been working out really well. Quinn is almost exactly like Patrick. Except, only in the good ways. He's like Patrick v.2.0. It's a little eerie, actually. He has the same toy and game preferences; many of the same idiosyncratic behaviors. But, mostly, he exudes the same presence. It makes me understand people who want to get their pets cloned better. Because, apparently, you really can get a new animal who will set at peace the part of yourself that aches with missing the old animal. With Shelties, however, you don't have to go to the trouble and expense of actual cloning, since they're already all so genetically similar.

2009-08-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

The time came to get a pet robot.

He's still charging.

2009-08-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

The time came to get another dog.

After meeting some Corgis and scouting out the mutts at a local animal shelter, I decided what I really wanted was to get a Sheltie puppy again. So, I emailed most of the Sheltie breeders in Oregon and ended up with leads on some litters that would be available in the fall, one litter of seven-week-old puppies that would be available in a week, and a pair of thirteen-week-old puppies that had been meant to be show dogs but were turning out too large. The seven-week-olds were down south of Eugene, and the thirteen-week-olds were up north of Portland. I made appointments to meet them both.

My experience with the seven-week-olds was pretty much the same experience I had meeting Patrick -- the puppy was annoying (although, I found that endearing since it reminded me of Patrick as an annoying puppy) and the adult mother was lovely.

The thirteen-week-olds were completely different. By that age, the puppies are starting to look and act like little Shelties instead of wriggly, toothy, little balls of fluff. They're old enough that personality differences between the two puppies were readily apparent. And, even better, they were already trained to sleep through the night. So, when I brought Quinn home, he was already, in some ways, the best behaved dog in the house.

So, now, when our dog pack rushes the door or tears around the yard, there is -- as there should be -- a fluffy but dignified, high-stepping, orange Sheltie in the mix.

2009-07-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

Perhaps my expectations were skewed, but I felt there was a disappointing lack of helicopters, time travel, and ninjas at my ten year high school reunion.

2009-07-21T23:21:00.000-07:00

As a shield against the chaos, confusion, consternation, and uproar of my house being dismantled and put into boxes around me, I started Otters In Space 2 last week. I needed to withdraw to a world where the animals talked, and I've been outlining it in the back of my mind for a while. So, I figured it was about ready.

I'm not usually much of a sit-down-and-write-every-day type of writer. Generally, I can go distressingly long periods of time before the guilt fully kicks in, forcing me to sit down and pound through a story in a week. This strategy has worked just well enough for me in the past that I haven't had much success replacing it with a strategy involving less guilt. Thus, I was very pleasantly surprised last week to find that the good habits I developed while writing Otters In Space 1 actually stuck.

About six months before Elaine was born, I decided that I didn't want to have a baby before writing a complete novel. So, I became very disciplined; I wrote every day; and I finished my first novel. Then I lapsed back into my old ways. So, I was taken completely by surprise last week to find that, while the habits I learned for Otters In Space 1 don't seem to apply to short stories or the other novel I'm working on, they do apply to further works of Otters In Space. As soon as I set those characters free again, the old training took over.

So, now, before I can go to bed, I need to make some progress on Otters In Space...

2009-07-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

Moving is a strange and confusing process. Returning to Seattle after my weeks of house hunting was like stepping into a mirage. I know I won't be here much longer -- not relative to the time I expect to spend in the house we're buying in Eugene. And, yet, this is the place I've lived for years. That house, I've been inside three times. So, the permanent feels impermanent. The transitory... solid.

And then there's Elaine's perspective. She spent the last two weeks asking to "go home." Of course, I've been explaining everything to her -- buying a new house, staying with Grandma, coming back to Seattle to pack... but it's all lost on a not-quite-two-year-old. Given how much she's asked to "go home," I thought she'd be really excited when we got back here. But, no. After an hour or so of enjoying all the toys we'd left up here, she went to the front door and declared, "Go home, see June." I had to show her videos of other greyhounds on youtube to calm her down enough to go to bed.

She's right though. Grandma's house (despite having June) isn't home. This isn't home (especially since the cats have already moved to Oregon). But Elaine won't recognize our new house as home either. That will take time. For me, though, I'm not so sure it will. To a certain extent, I've been living in that house for years... I just didn't know quite where it was or exactly what it looked like. Now I do, and I find that very peaceful.

2009-07-04T00:24:00.000-07:00

My child is afraid of fireworks. I did not see this coming. I've always loved fire and fireworks. For as long as I can remember. And Elaine gave every indication of being like me on this front. When we used the last of our wood up in our fireplace this winter, Elaine found the fire so thrilling that she kept begging for us to do it again for days afterward. But, apparently, fireworks are different. They not only terrify her, they make her fearful for my safety. Like Patrick was afraid of the ocean, Elaine is afraid of fireworks. Patrick not only wouldn't go near the water himself, he would try, frantically, to herd Daniel away from the water. And Elaine will not tolerate me being anywhere near fireworks -- even unlit ones that are still shrink-wrapped in a box. In fact, she'd prefer it if I didn't even go outside if there's a box of fireworks out there.

Sigh. I guess I'll just have to wait and have my fiery fun after she goes to bed tomorrow night. Hopefully she'll be over this by next year.

2009-06-25T16:35:00.000-07:00

In one week, I drove by 37 houses in Eugene; walked through 11; showed the best 3 to Daniel; and agreed to make an offer on 1. We accepted the counter offer this afternoon.

2009-06-13T00:36:00.000-07:00

Daniel's graduation is in the morning, and I've assembled an amuse-Elaine-kit to help survive the hour and a half long ceremony. I'm reasonably certain that it won't actually be enough to keep Elaine in the auditorium for the whole time. (Elaine's a very active child.) And my mom and sister have promised that between the two of them, they'll see to it that Elaine is watched and I can stay. However, I figure I should make it as easy for them as possible.

So, I've packed my blue backpack from elementary school with all kinds of treats and toys, including...

*Three kinds of snacks: the standard cheerio/raisin mix, a quartered tortilla (they travel really well because they're flat), and some special fruit and nut medley from Costco
*Plastic dogs and dinosaurs
*Finger puppets
*Assorted foam letters
*Two alphabet books
*Some scrunchies that Elaine thinks are bracelets
*A brand-new deck of playing cards (I think she'll like looking at the numbers)
*Felt pens and a pad of paper
*Extra pacifiers on beads
*And Bert

Lots of things that can be doled out slowly and played with quietly. Even so, I think we'll be lucky if she makes it twenty minutes.

2009-06-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

When I first watched Farscape, I was still living in the basement apartment by Green Lake. So, I didn't think a whole lot about the plot lines where Moya would lose control of life support and everyone would have to scurry around trying to fix the situation before it got too hot and Aeryn Sun's brain would melt. See, Peacekeeper's can't get too hot. Or their brain's melt. Like I said, I didn't think too much about it at the time. It was a cute but silly plot device.

Since then, however, we've moved into a house with giant, west-facing windows. None of which open. In fact, in the entire house, only one window opens. So, it's a heat trap. The afternoon sun shines in, and then it stays in. The house lopsidedly follows the heat patterns outside: the temperature rises when it's hot outside, but holds steady when it gets cool at night. So it stays hot until we finally get enough cool days in a row to slowly pump the heat back out through the one open window.

The practical upshot? Between six pm and midnight, it's 83 degrees in here. And I get Aeryn Sun. With that kind of dead heat, I can feel my thoughts disassembling, breaking down like complex proteins fracturing into their constituent molecules. Pieces of thoughts float around incoherently in my mind, and it feels like my brain is melting, just like a Peacekeeper's.

2009-05-29T12:38:00.000-07:00

After some serious thought, I've decided that I am not capable of objectively reviewing the new Star Trek movie. Was it a good movie? I have no idea. Was it a good Star Trek movie? I hope so? Did I like it? It unhinged my sense of linear time and took me to a place I'd rather be. (So, yes, very much.)

2009-05-21T23:42:00.000-07:00

This morning, I watched an animated Disney movie about spaceships and aliens (Lilo & Stitch) that I'd never seen before. This afternoon, I watched several episodes of the last season of Stargate while working on my spaceship. (I've been improving its ductwork.) Then, this evening, I went to see the new Star Trek in IMAX form.

Happiness: Spaceships and aliens all day.

2009-05-17T23:22:00.000-07:00

We got a burst of hot weather this weekend, so I dragged the fans up from the garage.

Elaine was terrified by the square, gridded box buzzing in the doorway. So, I told her it was a robot. Throughout the rest of the evening, Elaine took periodic breaks from anything she was doing to run over to the door, wave her hand at the fan, and say, "Hi robot!"

2009-05-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

Linear time can be hard to accept. The pilot of DS9 is about that. Commander Sisko, unable to adjust to the loss of his wife, "exists" in the time and place of her death.

People live in the past and the future all the time. I spent my first three years in Seattle walking Patrick around Green Lake and the surrounding neighborhoods talking to him about the house we would buy when Daniel got out of grad school. Slowly, as the true scale of grad school became understandable to me, talk of a house got replaced by talk of a second dog, which was more attainable. Eventually, I had to give up on living in a future that felt farther and farther away. (After living here three years, I had a much more concrete sense of how long another three years would be.)

When this year and Daniel's job search started, the end seemed finally in sight. Only, it wasn't the end I had promised myself. Without any control over the situation, I had led myself to believe that there was at least a reasonable chance that Daniel could get a professorship in Oregon or Northern California. And I could go home.

But... With the current economy and grim job prospects everywhere, that hope grew dimmer and dimmer. First, the idea of having a choice of locations (hopefully including some I liked) fell away as Daniel only received interest from universities in places like Michigan, Texas, and Scotland. Then, the idea of leaving this limbo at all was struck down as Daniel changed his sights from tenure-track positions to prestigious postdocs. Meaning another two to three years in a temporary location.

I had completely accepted that this summer I would be moving to Pittsburgh, a place I have never, ever wanted to even visit. And then Daniel got an email from UO.

Because linear time is so hard to accept, I can barely believe that two weeks ago I lived in the uncertainty that I would ever get to move home to Oregon. I simply can't reconcile my memories of a self who expected to be dragged haplessly across the country with the self who gets to go searching for houses in Eugene this summer.

This self is much better.

2009-05-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

We've come a long way in the last month. Instead of spending half an hour insistently repeating "taupe" while I frantically try to translate, last night, Elaine simply laid her head on my arm and said, "So tired."

Then, this morning, she insisted on having a spoon with her buttered toast. I was skeptical; however, Elaine successfully used the spoon to eat the toast, spearing each quarter in its soggily buttered middle.

2009-05-10T00:41:00.000-07:00

Kookaburraton is gone. Carolynn called us yesterday, so we know she got home okay. The news is still scattered... But it sounds like the rebel koalas were backing down. Some of their demands had been met, and they were coming to a compromise. It was probably an accident... A kangaroo got nervous. Somehow buttons got pushed; switches got flipped. A dial got turned. The practical upshot? The particle accelerator went kablooie. And it nudged Kookaburraton out of its quantum equilibrium. The whole town started oscillating in and out of phase with the rest of Australia. After four and a half cycles... Gone.

There is some speculation suggesting that if the particle accelerator were repaired, it could push Kookaburraton back in phase with the rest of the planet. But, even so... I don't think Daniel and I want to live somewhere so unstable. I'm glad Carolynn made it safely back to her family, but, even if Kookaburraton reappears, I don't think we'll be joining her.

2009-05-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

Elaine has developed a taste for Pixar movies. She watched Monsters Inc. while we were at my mom's house last weekend, and she was hooked. Every time we weren't watching it, Elaine would run to the TV, point, and yell "Sars!" (The final syllable of "monsters.") I managed to switch her to Ratatouille after my brain had been pummeled into a gooey mush. And, now that we're home, I've introduced Toy Story 1 & 2 into the mix.

Generally, Elaine's not a big fan of videos she hasn't seen before, but Toy Story had her mesmerized. She made it through the entire first half with barely a blink. (Generally it takes us several sittings to make it through a movie the first time, so that was really impressive.) From my perspective, it was a little weird to watch Toy Story for the first time since discovering Joss Whedon. I hadn't really thought about how dark it is before.

2009-05-05T00:09:00.000-07:00

We just heard that a band of rebel koalas have taken over Kookaburraton U.'s physics building. They've issued a list of demands and are threatening to overload the particle accelerator if they're not met. (Apparently, the Kookaburraton particle accelerator could take out a significant portion of the Southern Hemisphere if properly misused.) I can hardly believe it. We were talking about this possiblity only two days go... I didn't think it would really happen.

Carolynn's crazy with worry for her family. We've bought her plane tickets back to Australia, but hopefully she'll be able to get through to her brother before she has to use them.

2009-05-04T00:18:00.000-07:00

I stayed up late last night, drinking tea and talking to Carolynn. She told me all about Kookaburraton. She misses it there. She's been settling in better this last week -- watching Sesame Street with Elaine, practicing zen meditation with Heidi, etc. -- but, she clearly wants to go home. The thing is, from talking to Carolynn, I'm feeling less and less sure Kookaburraton is the right place for us.

They do amazing work there. The robots that Daniel would be writing algorithms for are the most advanced in the world. Not only can they beat grandmasters at chess and predict the stock market, they can eat eucalyptus leaves ten times faster than the record holding koala. (Of course, therein lies the problem...) And all the other sciences are just as advanced, as Carolynn demonstrates. Talking wallabies, walking eucalyptus trees, and kangaroos who can do your taxes! Could there be a more exciting city in the entire world?

And, yet, I'm not sure we want to be bringing Elaine up among so much civil unrest. Carolynn says the robots are harmless. Her own people, however, are growing more and more agitated. They don't have equal rights, and the situation isn't stable. Maybe in twenty years, the revolution will have come and passed. Until then, I'm not so sure...

And, well, the eucalyptus trees are anyone's guess.

2009-04-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

Carolynn, our wallaroo translator, has been here about a week now. She hasn't taught us much about Australia or Kookaburraton yet. She claims that she needs to settle into the rhythm -- become a part of the family first. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's working out so well.

Her first move was to try to become something of a nanny for Elaine. I liked the idea, and her assistance did make it easier to finish editing "Otters In Space" and write a good cover letter for it. However, Elaine really isn't willing to accept the authority of a fuzzy marsupial, barely taller than her. Every time Carolynn tries to help Elaine with something, Elaine just shouts her new favorite word, "Self!" Meaning, of course, that she wants to do it herself.

After Carolynn gave up on the nanny idea, she tried bonding with the dogs, but... Well, I'm not completely sure how it happened, but let's just say that Trudy and Carolynn are about evenly matched in a boxing match. Dale tips the scales.

So, now, Carolynn mostly sulks around with the cats. Theresa, who's always cold, hides in Carolynn's pouch, and I think Heidi's taking lessons on being a kangaroo. She's always been a versatile cat.

Well, at least one of us will be prepared for our new life in Australia...

2009-04-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

It's interesting how Daniel's and my careers have followed similar paths while we've lived in Seattle. We were both published for the first time in the summer of '05. And, this spring, while he's been finishing up the research for his dissertation and applying for postdocs and jobs, I finally finished up the editing on my first novel and have started looking for an agent. We've been aware of the similarities between our jobs for a while -- they're both creative and amorphous. However, there's a substantial difference between having an advisor and working completely alone. I've had a great deal more control over my work than Daniel has had over his. There were many times when I would have traded that for a little guidance, but, in the long run, I think the lack of guidance may have caused me to build a stronger individual vision for my work than I would have otherwise.

At any rate, I now have a novel making the rounds. If only I could find a little more time to work on the second one...

2009-04-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

A big truck just pulled up in front of our house, and a big, fluffy wallaroo hopped out! I had been hoping she'd get here last week, so we could dress her up as the Easter bunny... but, oh well. She's here now! I can see her through the window, hopping up the front steps... So exciting!

2009-04-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

Elaine's language skills have been progressing fantastically albeit patchily. She clearly understands a vast number of words, and she can say quite a few. However, her pronunciation often leaves something to be desired. She has a few standard babyified words -- "doot" is milk, and "shoop" stroller. (She came up with both of those herself, but they've stayed consistant for months.) And there are some words she can say perfectly like "hot soup" and "shoes." But, then, there's the third category -- words she tries to pronounce properly and yet completely fails at. These can be tricky. For instance, if we're in the kitchen talking about things to eat, it can take me a while to work out that "suit" means spoon. Or, if it's late in the evening and Elaine suddenly insists that she must have "taupe," there are a lot of possibilities to work through before discovering that she's substituted 't' for 'cr' and the 'p' is really supposed to be a 'b'.

So, she stayed up half an hour later than she might have if I had only known "taupe" meant crib. I'm looking forward to her being better able to enunciate.

2009-04-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

We've ordered up a wallaroo translator. I know they speak English in Australia, but there are bound to be cultural differences. And these wallaroo translators are supposed to be entire cultural guides, familiar with the most minute customs. It's all the rage -- indigenous animal guides. So, since it'll be a week or two before our wallaroo gets here, we went to the zoo to show Elaine some of the wallabies and wallaroos there. Pretty cute. Not as intelligent as the genetically/cerebrally enhanced wallaroo that we've ordered -- but, then, you wouldn't want to put one of those in a zoo.

2009-04-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

It's a lot farther away than I would have liked, but Daniel's really excited about the job... And, in the end, that's what's really important to us. So... We'll be moving to Australia this summer!

It's really peaceful to finally know where we'll be living next year.

2009-03-30T00:34:00.000-07:00

A brilliant innovation: instead of making cookie dough and baking cookies, make cookie dough and keep it in the refrigerator all week. Then, bake only enough cookies to eat while still warm every night. This way, the cookies are always freshly baked! No stale, week-old cookies wasting away in a tin. Only warm cookies with gooey chocolate chips melting the vanilla ice cream on top of them. Oh yeah. It's so simple... And, yet, somehow I'd never thought of it before.

2009-03-21T23:47:00.000-07:00

I decided to run the dogs through their tricks today. For Trudy, that means "sit," "lie down," and "shake (hands)." For Dale, it means "sit," "roll over," and "turn around" -- though, she can't tell the last two apart. Needless to say, they're not all that impressive.

However, it's been a long time since I've bothered quizzing them, and, apparently, Elaine doesn't remember seeing it before. From the look in her eye, you would think I had performed actual magic. With mere words, I had controlled the movements of wild beasts!

If only she could have seen Patrick...

2009-03-15T21:03:00.000-07:00

When people -- especially other writers -- hear that my husband and mother are my main editors, they usually suggest I might be better off with... well, editors who would be more comfortable being cruel. These people, of course, have never had their work edited by Daniel.

In response to the various drafts of the story I finished earlier this week, Daniel suggested:

"Perhaps it would be more exciting with space voles?"
"The end is unsatisfying, and the characterization of the friend is superfluous."
"You could try cutting the entire second half."
"This is better... I can see potential here."

And, finally, "I can't find anything wrong with it.

Yeah. With responses like that, I probably wouldn't even let Daniel read my stories (or at least comment on them) if he wasn't a really good editor.

2009-03-08T00:24:00.000-08:00

I've decided to start a league of lizards and small desert birds, joined together, in the full twilight of righteousness, waging an eternal battle against the evil forces of Daylight Savings Time.

2009-03-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

Elaine will fly on an airplane for her first time today. Myself, I've avoided flying for about five years now, but this should be a pretty easy flight: Seattle to San Jose. And, thankfully, Daniel was able to change our seats around last minute, so we can all sit together. It may be a challenge keeping her happy for the full flight, but I've done what I can with packing toys. For one, she'll get a plush Ernie doll when we get to the plane.

Elaine's been extremely enamored of Ernie since my dad introduced her to youtube videos of classic Seseame Street last week. Kermit's pretty good -- but Ernie is her favorite. Yesterday, she kept trying to share her breakfast with him. She'd hold her toast out to my computer screen and say, "Eee!" and "Shaa!" Meaning, "Ernie" and "share." She also went around finding rubber ducks and offering them to the alter of my monitor.

2009-02-24T23:47:00.000-08:00

I have a hundred marked up pages of "Otters In Space" to work through, but, instead, I've been spending all my free time on a short story. There's something about the returning sunshine that always make me want to write new things. I've heard a lot of people say that the winters in Seattle are good for creativity -- there's nothing to do but stay home and write. I haven't found that for myself. The darkness makes me hibernate, creatively. Editing is okay, but I just don't feel like writing new things when the sun goes down at 4:30, and it probably spent the three hours it was actually in the sky behind clouds anyway.

2009-02-18T16:54:00.000-08:00

Handfuls of sand = happiness. Or so I'm told. Not with words, though. Elaine was too busy to speak, trying to move the entire park's worth of sand, handful by handful, into her stroller. She thought we should bring it all home with us.

2009-02-08T00:48:00.000-08:00

It's very freeing to be between drafts for editing "Otters In Space." For the last half year or so, I've felt like any free time I have time to work on my fiction, I should spend editing. But, now, I'm waiting for Daniel to read and comment on the current draft, so... I'm free to work on short stories or whatever other project I want. Of course, this will only last for the next several days, as Daniel plans on reading draft three while he's in Florida. So, once he gets back, it'll be polish, polish, polish and then research packaging it up to send to publishers or agents.

But, for now... I'm free! Free!

And, to that end (the end of exercising my freedom), I've decided to take part in a current internet meme. Thus: 25 things...

1. I spent my evening dancing to the Rolling Stones with my daughter and sister.
2. When I go for too long without writing fiction, I actually start getting headaches.
3. Sometimes I'm jealous of my cats when they're hanging out together on a sunny windowsill. I think it would be nice to be a cat and join them.
4. The first time I realized that I would rather have a fruit smoothy than a chocolate milkshake was a moment of true identity crisis for me. Fruit over chocolate? Seriously?
5. I have too many animals I like too much to pick an all-time favorite. Over the years, though, my favorites have tended to include otters, cats, octopi, Utahraptors and, most recently, giraffes.
6. I find it strange to count a non-carnivorous, non-vicious type of animal (namely giraffe) among my favorites.
7. Watching an entire season of Stargate (or, better yet, Farscape) in one week feels a little like having my brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. This is a sensation I kind of crave.
8. I'm very, very glad that my daughter is not at all shy.
9. I'm actually a luddite. Ironic, no?
10. My favorite part of the week is my daughter's music class.
11. I listen to music as I fall asleep. In high school, it was Brian Wilson. In college, the soundtrack to Camelot. Now, James Marsters.
12. My imaginary friend from childhood still visits me, though not as often as he used to. And, generally, he doesn't stay very long.
13. I picked out the name for my first dog, Patrick, ten years before getting him. And, though I don't know when I'll get him yet, I've already named the next one.
14. My favorite part of Daniel's and my wedding was the processional music: the theme from Jurassic Park. It makes a great processional.
15. If I didn't have a cat who would eat them, I would have Jade trees in my house.
16. It makes me happy that, according to at least one source, my hair is essentially a shade of green to people who are red/green color blind. This seems right.
17. I like to play silly mind games like "which actor would play me in a movie?" or "what kind of car would my pet drive?"
18. My husband is practicing the guitar chords for a song he wrote about my sister right now. It's an incredibly pleasant sound.
19. I've managed to keep my pet betta fish alive for an entire month. Things looked really dicey for him at first, but now he's going strong.
20. I will be really surprised if I agree with the people who like Babylon 5 better than Deep Space Nine after I watch it. However, I've been surprised before.
21. I started wearing baseball caps in college to make me feel anonymous. Now I wear them to feel more individual.
22. I miss the intensity of my imagination as a child.
23. I'm looking forward to finding out my daughter's favorite color, assuming she has one.
24. My favorite color for flowers is yellow.
25. Daffodils are my favorite flower, and my favorite poem, William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," is almost certainly responsible for this.

2009-02-07T00:20:00.000-08:00

Red bell peppers make a good substitute for tomatoes, if you're out of them, in a BLT. They give the sandwich a kind of spicy taste.

2009-02-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

Draft three done!

2009-01-29T00:13:00.000-08:00

The shoe-storms seem to have passed. And all the shoes on the ground have melted. There may never be another shoe-storm again. By the time the weather is right for it, Elaine will probably have learned to pronounce "snow" correctly. Alas, no more pointing at the sky and joyously shouting "shoe! shoe!"

On the Beyond Centauri front: I found the second half of the issue equally engaging. The "Rusty the Robot" adventure was cute, and "She Came To Sing" by Susan Hanniford Crowley really stood out. However, more than any individual piece, the overall magazine pulled together into an experience that was optimistic, adventurous, and fun. Most of the stories featured characters with a drive to figure things out: how did I get here? how can we fix our spaceship? how can we save our planet? or, simply, how can I get home? It gave me a very warm and collegial feeling to read my story among so many others that felt so right to me.

2009-01-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

My contributor's copy of Beyond Centauri came yesterday. I've been eagerly checking the mail for it all month. So far, I've read about halfway through the issue, and I'm finding it surprisingly delightful and engaging. I particularly like the SpaceMonkey Adventure by MonkeyJohn and "A Planet Called Cheese" by Judith Kelvin Miller. It's usually quite hard to find science-fiction featuring talking animals, and it's by far my favorite genre. So I'm very happy to find two stories about animals flying spaceships (monkeys in one, mice in the other) inside one cover.

Although... I suppose, based on which story of mine they bought, I shouldn't be so surprised...

2009-01-16T22:38:00.000-08:00

I was making progress towards catching up on Battlestar Galactica. Less than a season behind... But, now we're canceling cable. Most of the shows I watch are available on the internet, and $100 a month is crazy expensive. Given the number of shows I watch, it'll be significantly cheaper to wait and buy them on dvd. Besides, I seem to enjoy shows more if I watch large chunks of them all at once.

In other news, the tiny diplomat is still alive! I'm constantly delighted and surprised to find him still swimming about, above my monitor.

2009-01-11T02:57:00.000-08:00

Having never had one before, I wasn't completely sure I would like a pet fish. I had two kinds of caged animals as a child: rats and walking sticks. The walking sticks lasted less than a week before I realized they were simply too alien and creepy for me. We gave them back to my third grade teacher who supplied them in the first place. The rats lasted several years... But I never trained them to do anything, and, when I thought about them, which wasn't that often, I felt guilty for not giving them any attention beyond basic, necessary maintenance. In the end, I decided that if you're going to go to the trouble of having a pet, it might as well be a cat or dog.

Now I find that I must amend that conclusion: if you're going to go to the trouble of having a fuzzy, house pet (it's important to leave room for things like goats and horses here -- just in case), then it might as well be a cat or dog.

A pet fish is really more akin to a potted plant than to other pets. (Though, my cats eat potted plants. Ironically, they've shown no interest in Emmett.) And, while Emmett is every bit as alien as a walking stick, I find him very peaceful. He lives in an entirely different atmosphere than the rest of us. Maintaining him is like keeping a miniature dignitary from a world of methane-breathers on my desk. The walking sticks were less like dignitaries and more like miniature savage warlords. Very creepy. If I'm going to keep a tiny representative of an alien race on my desk, it may as well come from a world with which I keep peaceful relations.

2009-01-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

I went fishing today and caught an Emmett. He's green with red fins. But he's not a cyborg. He seems much happier in his new tank than he was when I caught him. And he swims around a lot more than I expected.

2009-01-04T23:55:00.000-08:00

The cyborgs have been out in force. And a snowstorm met us in Seattle. It's a little surreal, after a week of sunny California, to have a three inch blanket of white on the ground and fluffy flakes filling the air. I hope it doesn't keep the cyborgs away.

2008-12-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

I woke up before Elaine today and was impatient for her to get up so she could open her stocking. This'll probably be the last Khristmas when that happens for a long time. She's still a little hazy on the concept of opening presents, but it's amazing to see her dance with happiness when she's given a new toy she really likes. The biggest hits so far have been the pink computer from my dad and the baby doll from my mom. Though, it completely blew her mind when we put in the dvd of Dr. Horrible and started up Commentary: The Musical. She threw her hands in the air, and her mouth dropped open. She must have stood like that for almost a minute.

For myself, I'm very excited to pick out Emmett when we all get back to Seattle. His tank is blue.

2008-12-20T00:43:00.000-08:00

A christmas tree is a veritable buffet of new toys. Elaine has been methodically divesting my mom's tree of ornaments ever since we arrived. She's especially excited by all the ornaments that are little gold frames with pictures inside. She loves pictures of people and animals she knows.

Also, on the first day of christmas, my true love gave to me a brand new yellow toothbrush. Then, he threatened to give me eleven more brand new yellow toothbrushes.

2008-12-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

Surreal Botany is being reviewed in Science tomorrow!

2008-12-17T00:50:00.000-08:00

The best thing about the snow -- beside the fact that Elaine can happily tromp around in it indefinitely -- is how much brighter it makes everything. The sunlight bounces off of the snow, making the dark Seattle winter easily twice as bright.

Another thing that's great, but even greater because of something on top of it, is cookies. We made cookies tonight. A wonderful activity. But, when it comes to eating holiday cookies... Well, let's just say that I eventually transcended the actual cookies. Frosting applied directly to chocolate chips and sprinkles, skipping the whole tedious sugar-cookie part, is much tastier.

So, there you have it: snow and cookies. Both great. Sunlight bouncing off of snow, and gooey gobs of frosting holding together masses of chocolate chips? Even better.

2008-12-14T00:55:00.000-08:00

We built a snowman tonight. Elaine's height, carrot-nosed, and sporting red grapes for eyes. And while we worked, we sang a cheerful song about zombies, by Jonathan Coulton. Only, just as we sang, "All we want to do is eat your brains," well...

It turned out that someone did want to eat his eyes.

The Floor People were very egalitarian about it. Elaine ate the left eye; Trudy the right. Dale munched on the poor snowman's nose, and then eventually moved on to directly gnawing on the snow of his face. Yes, Dale is a dog who will eat your face. If it's made out of snow.

2008-12-09T01:34:00.000-08:00

Every spare minute is devoted to spaceship repair. The hull is sound now. Tomorrow I may cut holes in it, so I can see the inky, black space outside.

2008-12-07T22:31:00.000-08:00

I made preliminary repairs to the spaceship hull today. Tomorrow I buy more duct tape.