phinnia | Jun. 18th, 2005

As always, in bulleted list format:

Sean has recently learned how to open doors. Just inside doors, and only the ones that push in. But still.
He has also discovered that the sofa is a fun place to hang out. He's more of a sofa hog than his mother, because he's thirty times as squirmy.
But he has also learned to check for the presence of a laptop before climbing up on anyone's lap.
New spoken words: 'Hi!' and 'boy', occasionally with the B, too. :-D
Other recent accomplishments: he's demonstrating the understanding of several new words, specifically 'bath' and 'bedtime'. (Well, he knows he's to be in bed at bedtime ... until no one's looking, that is ... but if you tell him it's bathtime he'll take YOU into the bathroom. He has also learned the MEANING of 'no', but not how to SAY 'no', which is ... I think backwards from most children. :-D
Programmer update: Chris is leaving Tuesday afternoon for Port Angeles, WA, returning ... Friday? Saturday? I forget. And then leaving out the following Sunday evening for Seattle.
Some nigerian scammer from Craigslist also attempted to rip him off, but I'm sure he'll blog about that later.
Me: Thirty percent chance of rain. (We're allowed to say his name.) (Ten points for anyone who gets the reference.)
My personal thirty-day fiction challenge ends today. Assuming I can write and post something even faintly creative by the end of the day, I win. GO ME.
In the past four days I have done countless loads of laundry, screwed up my knee temporarily, had some lovely beer (McMeniman's Ruby Pale Ale) and tried the goodness that is Trader Joe's Triple Ginger Snaps. (SO GOOD.) And also: their lavender dryer bags are wonderful.
Today is apparently Portland Pride ... which I would go to, if crowds of random people that I don't know didn't make me feel oogy.
I need to get one of those birding-by-ear CDs so I can figure out what the birds are outside that I can hear and not see, specifically the Phaser Jay.
I am still stuck on Incarnations of Immortality book 2. For all that Piers Anthony claims he's conquered writer's block, I don't think he's done it very effectively. As much as you can write your way through writer's block, some of the stuff you write then is bound to be crap. And so it is with Bearing an Hourglass - you can pretty much kill the entire section with the frickin' BEMs and the fantasy world and have done with it, if you want my opinion. I liked Death and Fate and Nature and Evil; I barely remember War, and Good was a MAJOR LETDOWN, kind of like Mostly Harmless. His so-called conquering of writer's block is also why the later Xanth novels were crap, in my opinion.
That's all the news that isn't. It's a lovely sunny day here in southeast PDX, and I get to sleep on lavender-scented sheets tonight. Coffee's that way, and so am I.