AlphaBytes ends today, and I’m feeling pangs of regret because I didn’t do as much as I wanted with it. In that way, it feels like a typical Sunday night, when I look at my to do list for the weekend with so many items still left on it and wonder where the time went. […]

I got back yesterday from Peoria, the site of this year’s NQA show. This was the 13th year in a row that my mom and I have gone to the show together, which makes it one of the longest running traditions our family has. The details vary each year, of course, but there’s always the […]

I was sitting at my kitchen table the other day (Sunday, I believe it was) when I heard a strange scritching noise and looked up to see a squirrel who had climbed the steps up to the patio door and was putting his paws up on the screen. Did he want to come in? Had […]

Before we went to the concert last week, I was trying to remember if I knew any Asia, and Mr. Karen assured me I did, because he remembered me telling him–back in the 1980’s– that I consumed an album of theirs. I didn’t recall telling him any such thing, and I’m the one who usually […]

I went to see a radio show today. Yes, there is something not quite right there. It’s a radio show, meant to be listened to, not watched. But still, it was something I’d never done so off I went to Ann Arbor this morning to be part of the live audience for Whad’ya Know?. It’s […]

Mr. Karen and I went to see Kansas last night at what I’ve decided to call the DTE Music Knob. Of course we did; we only miss their Detroit area shows if we’re out of town ourselves. We’ve even traveled to see them a few times when their tours didn’t come through Detroit or didn’t […]

Contrary to the prediction of the clueless cabdriver who took us to the airport in Las Vegas, fans did not “burn the place down” when the Pistons won the NBA Championship last night. (I wonder now if the cabdriver was actually a writer for Jimmy Kimmel.) In fact, fans in Detroit haven’t burned anything down […]

When I’m short on motivation for morning pages, I sometimes just quit before I’ve written three pages, but sometimes I play the alphabet game instead. “X” is a letter I allow myself to skip during the game because it’s hard and the whole point is to get the words flowing. You know it’s a really […]

As promised (or should that be threatened?) in my last entry, today it’s quilt story time. Mel and I made this one for Beth and Jeremy, who make it possible for us to hang out at The Usual Suspects, without which we probably wouldn’t have met in the first place. This quilt got its start […]

I survived both Las Vegas and TUS-Con. (The Unofficial Guide advises me to call it Las Vegas, never just Vegas, in order to look like a local. It also says about fine dining that if there are small yellow sculptures on the table that they’re probably butter.) I am now plopped at a gate at […]

I’m tapping this out on a plane to Las Vegas. This will be my first visit there, which seems surprising considering how much I travel, but I can’t go everywhere, not even to all the famous and obvious tourist places. This trip has me rattled, much more so than usual. I’ve calmed down now that […]

I got my very first pair of prescription sunglasses last weekend. I find I’m wearing my contacts less often lately– staring at a computer screen for hours every day seems to be getting harder and harder and use up more and more rewetting drops to keep my eyes happy with having the contacts in. Therefore, […]

One of the reasons I’ve put up so few entries here lately is that I’ve fallen hard for Distributed Proofreaders and have been using many of my lunch hours to play there instead of write here. In case you don’t have time to go read what DP is about, the gist is that it lets […]

It’s the first day of AlphaBytes 2004, and I already feel like I’m failing. This is obviously a sign of a mental defect of some sort, as it’s hard to see how I could have actually screwed up already, not having written anything other than this now sentence and three quarters and still having the […]