On why the left lean

I lean left politically. That will mean different things in different countries, so to clarify: As a sweeping generalization and with the understanding that these issues contain nuanced points I’m painting with broad strokes, I care about peoples’ well-being more, and well before, companies’ well-being. This summary should, as a peek into my mentality, be … Read more

What I read this month

A busy month, reading-wise, though the vast bulk of it was graphic novels. I fell into something of a rabbit hole, just checking out the early (sometimes all) volumes of whatever series nearby libraries happened to have available. No premeditation, no putting anything on hold, just taking advantage of whatever I could get whenever wherever … Read more

Update on worlds colliding

I wrote last week about reading the first twenty pages of a graphic novel called Undiscovered Country that had a crazy amount of the same content as the thrust of my recently finished novel first draft. To the point where, if it continued, it would potentially mean drastically or entirely changing my novel before being … Read more

Tiny bird update

I finally heard back from the animal refuge where we had taken Fiadh–they’re understandably slammed with work and replying to people inquiring about one critter or another who was brought in must be super low priority–and there were three main elements to the news: 1) It’s a he, not a she (Fiadh still works as … Read more

When worlds collide

Well, crap. I mentioned at the top of the year that I had finished the first draft of my first novel. Cut to yesterday, when I started reading a graphic novel I’d grabbed at random during a recent visit to the library and it’s… well… it’s really, weirdly, painfully close to being the same story … Read more

Update to the confusion about my height

(… and other headlines you’ve never read before…) You ever have one of those “ah-HA!” moments when you realize something that you hadn’t understood before? And maybe you feel a bit dumb about it, because you should’ve gotten it earlier? But it’s kinda not on you? Only it is, at least a bit? You know … Read more

Read this book

I believe this is the first time I’ve doubled down on the work of one particular writer in my Read this book recommendations–I lauded her first book back in January–but man, is it deserved. A Closed and Common Orbit doesn’t follow the story established in the first book of the Wayfarer series in terms of … Read more

What I read this month

May ended up being an unexpected windfall of material to read, and as it was generally pretty quick to get through, I made good headway with it. I was in a library and wandered by the graphic novel section and came across the first three collected books of a series called Ascender. It took me … Read more

Tale of a tiny bird

We went to a friend’s pool party this past Saturday. One of our friends there had found a tiny baby bird–way more skin than fluffy down, eyes still not open, not able to move around too much and even that very unsteadily and unbalanced–on the pool deck. With no nest in sight to try to … Read more

Wait, I’m HOW tall?

A month ago I went for a medical exam to look at booking a minor operation, and in the pre-exam they check everyone’s height and weight and blood pressure. The usual things. Later, as I was in talking to the doctor, he was very frank about everything, and he brought up my weight. He asked, … Read more