Ours had four. One of them didn't reflect light and could only be detected as a hole in the star field. And all but one of them moved in orbits so unnatural that my collaborator had to learn to render animations just so we could figure out what they would look like from the ground. Moons are cool.

I loved, loved, loved reading them Fox in Socks and Green Eggs and Ham. Both books made it so much fun to start out at a modest pace and then just start reading faster and faster and faster until the kid was absolutely giggling with delight. But yeah, not as much demand now that they're 14 and 9.

When my daughter is extremely tired but just can't fall asleep, she'll often ask me to recite (a very abridged version of) The Hobbit to her. It's just so soothing in its cadence & familiarity that it puts her right to sleep. Who would give that up to the machines?

10% of the time it's life-changing news, while 90% of the time it's chitchat, but it's that 10% you think of when someone calls you out of the blue, isn't it?

BREAKING NEWS: Tensions between Thor and the Care Bears have escalated rapidly overnight.

Ah. It’s finally pumpkin Jax season. Best time of the year! (Not sure if it’s actually seasonal, but it’s been a minute since I saw you posting about pumpkins nonstop.)

I love how one of the first comments on this story was "she's going to fit right in in South Minneapolis". There are so many *delightfully* weird people in this city, and I love it.

I'm not a musician or a true audiophile, but music has always been there, quietly (or loudly!) shaping my emotional landscape, burning itself into my memories in ways too numerous and complicated to articulate.

And I'll never not associate Chopin's Nocturnes with William or the flute of Elven's A Drop for Every Tear (I don't think that band even exists anymore?) with Arya, since that's what I played when putting them to bed as babies.

I have way, way more songs associated with Beth and the kids, of course. Like, when Beth goes to OVFF each year, I can't help but binge her music, and there are some songs that "belong" to memories of points in our relationship.

But those teenage romances leave a mark on the soul, you know? And sometimes that mark is a song that hits you out of the blue as you approach your 50th birthday.

I associate that song with my first head-over-heels experience in high school. I don't want to go back. She was sweet enough, but I've been very happily married to a positively perfect-for-me partner for nearly 20 years - one by turns playful and serious in all the right ways and as geeky as I am.

Had several Pink Floyd songs stuck in my head earlier this week, which makes sense, since I was listening to a 70s prog rock mix over the weekend. But today it's I Can Show You the World from the 90s Aladdin, and now I'm weirdly wistful. Where the heck did *that* come from?

PC in an official game? There have been entire *sidebars* meant to address unexpectedly disruptive shit that happened in our playtests and new character classes based on things they couldn’t quite pull off but that sounded very cool. Also, multiple art pieces. I have no shame, so yes, I have ever.

Beth’s work put us up at a local-ish lake resort for the weekend, which was cool. Weirdly, our cabin wasn’t ready until 6pm (!). Once it was, we found that every surface had been wiped down with vinegar. Then we found the box of Plan B under the kitchen sink. My sincere condolences to housekeeping.

I tried to tell him that, but I didn’t get much traction. 😭

It’s often a style guide thing. I collaborated with a newspaper copy desk guy for many years, and AP style doesn’t use Oxford commas. It kind of made me cry, because I’m Oxford comma ride-or-die (and all my freelance work has used it in their style guides).

The state funeral for someone whose reign lasted nearly 150 years should probably be a big deal, right? Even among people who live three times as long as humans, that's approaching Queen Elizabeth levels of a long reign. Most people alive can't remember anyone else being in charge.

I can tell this is going to be one of those mornings where I spend an hour+ inventing a ritual appropriate to my protagonist's fictional culture (a funeral, in this case) that will only serve as the backdrop to the events of a single scene.

Gonna try to move forward a few chapters and then do a full reread to make sure it all holds together without showing its seams. Man am I ever out of practice with long fiction.