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.

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!"

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.