personal

What? It’s only Wednesday?

So the dog was sick in the middle of the night, discovering (I think not for the first time) that he can’t eat peanut shells after all. We already knew this, and tried to prevent it as it was happening, but I think he’d argue otherwise. I think he’d suggest that we don’t need to worry if a couple shells fall on the floor and he gobbles them up. There’s plenty of grass outside to settle his stomach outside, after all, and when has anything like a little peanut shell ever made him sick?

But then, that’s because he’s a dog. We love him dearly, but he’s not exactly the brightest.

Of course, I slept through all this and only discovered it after the fact, as I was on my way out the door this morning.

But, honestly, that’s probably the most exciting thing that happened today. Unless, I dunno, you count me picking my father up from the eye doctor after work.

Next week promises to be more eventful, judging by my calendar, but this week sure as heck isn’t.

Nothin’ doin’

So little happening here it’s almost comical.

So why not instead go vote for Heather’s story and its inclusion in the Beneath Ceaseless Skies anthology? Admittedly, it’s the only one of the five stories up for consideration that I’ve read, but I really enjoyed it, and I thought BCS did a very good job with the audio podcast. (You can read or listen to it here.)

I’m sure something around here will happen eventually.

Sunday

I did the crossword, I donated blood, and I wrote this on a free-writing prompt:

“There are no spaceships in the Bible.”

Praetor Corothas says this angrily, the menace unmistakable in his voice, and the young woman who has brought him the early-morning reports from the front backs away slowly. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a believer, much less one so quick to bristle at a perceived blasphemy, but he’s clearly struggling to contain what I think would — outside the burden of my presence, of course — be a white-hot, blinding rage. He knocks a half-empty coffee cup on its side and curses.

I’ve seen these reports, the missives the generals under the Praetor’s command have radioed in overnight, and the news is not good. Rebels attacking the northern cities, several dozen more Alliance troops dead, the command gates on Mount Aronson for the first time in a half-century breached. And yet what Corothas has decided to focus on, to the exclusion of all else, is this one tiny footnote: a small rebel encampment, three days hover-travel from central command, where Frank Bane and his followers have set up what from all accounts is their own private religion.

I shake my head at the nonsense of it all. Not at the religion, which for all I know is no more harmful than the Christianity of the planet’s original settlers (and which Corothas has apparently inherited), but at the thought that this tiny sect is even worth worrying about. Frank Bane is nothing. Charismatic, of course, and prone to violence; as a former soldier in the Alliance command he will bear watching — but that’s the only reason he’s in the morning’s reports at all. He left his commission with nothing, no allies, no support; so what if he’s scrounged together a few tundra-rats during his subsequent exile in the north? He’s sold them a bill of goods on which he can’t possibly deliver, and moreover I think everyone involved knows it. Everyone except for Corothas, that is. Our ships are secure, and we will honor our treaty with the Alliance. If a handful of rebels sees our ships as emissaries of God rather than the death that they are, doesn’t that make them less dangerous, not more?

It wasn’t a bad day.

“I bet you told her all your trees are sequoias.”

Another unpleasantly hot and humid day. Even at seven o’clock this morning, when I drove with my father to Mineola so he could get his car inspected (and could, unlike me last month, get a ride back home), it was muggy and the sun was beating down.

That kept up pretty much all day, but it wasn’t all bad. I kept to the house, read, and watched some of the Olympics. I’d forgotten that trampoline was a sport, despite having had a fitness instructor in college who had been a trampolinist at one point. She said the sport had taken a hit in the 1970s, after one too many accidents and injuries because of unsupervised children on backyard trampolines. Which I guess is why stumbling across it in the online coverage was a little like discovering that Hula Hooping was a sport. But it remains an actual thing, and, from what I saw of the women’s finals, takes a fair amount of gymnastic athleticism.

Then this evening I watched the lovely To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. It’s maybe not overly suspenseful by Hitchcockian standards, but it was thoroughly enjoyable.

And that was Saturday.

August, but only just

August is an unpleasantly muggy month. And let me tell you, accidentally wearing your T-shirt backwards all the way to work isn’t a good way to make the commute any more comfortable. (I flipped it when I got to the office.)

The day went by, as most of the rest of this week has: unremarkably. I’m actually quite glad the weekend is here.