Halloween party prep = vacuuming up real cobwebs before putting up fake ones.

Do you know what I have not had in more than 45 years? A 7-UP topped with a scoop of rainbow sherbet.

On the bright side, it's the time of year when while I walk the dog I can eat blackberries for breakfast and bring home a giant puffball mushroom and Mirabelle plums for lunch. On the dark side, zucchinis. At least 10/ per wk from the garden and nooooo I just can't anymore...

50 years ago, I saw the poster for Jaws and promised myself I would never see that movie (because I love swimming in the ocean). I broke that promise to myself on Sunday, on the big screen, in HD. And... it was a surprisingly good movie! And way too cheesy to fire up any underwater paranoia. Phew!

The kittens have reached the phase where I'm glad we don't have curtains.

Had to take Mama Noodle and the kitten that we're keeping to the vet today to get chipped and vaccinated. They were shocked by the whole thing and obviously couldn't understand why they had to go through that. I don't know if they'll ever trust me again.

Having barely survived 6 sessions to help me recover from a big injury I did to myself, um, walking, I have to say I don't want to have a deep tissue massage ever again, not in this life or in any life thereafter. #neveragain

Who on Earth names their cat Meowsolini?

newrepublic.com/article/1961... Down with the #oligarchy #plutocracy The villains in "A New Faith" < tinjar.ghost.io/a-new-faith > are people like them! #solarpunk #hopepunk #bookstodon #amwriting #climate #climatechange #climatecrisis #climateaction #adaptation #migration #justice #humanrights

*heads out to the garden. looks around. sighs* You've heard of Day of the Triffids? Locally, we're having the Summer of the Aphids.

Do you know what's sadder than the tears of a clown? Opening the fridge in the morning and discovering there's no diet Coke inside because yesterday you decided it was finally time to quit (again).

55 years old and I still can't spell rhythm without a dictionary.

I'm actually surprised it wouldn't take more. Forests are great and I'd totally love more of them, but there's only so much carbon they can lock up in biomass before saturating. www.latimes.com/environment/...

I watched Saturday Night Fever for the first time yesterday. I thought it would be all glam disco dancing with a super hot young Travolta, but it was actually a dark film (what a mess the patriarchy makes everybody!) with a maybe possibly slightly hopeful ending.

Stuck on a late, overcrowded train I ended up bonding with the woman next to me over anti-capitalist, pro-community ideas... until she started sprouting conspiracy theories. She wasn't stupid or uninformed, was just reaching wrong conclusions from the right dataset. It gave me hope, in a way.

Vive la résistance!

I love me a good 80s radio station, but what's up with them having weekly countdowns with 40 year old songs moving up and down a couple of spots in the charts? And based on what, exactly?

We had a cuckoo going "Cuckoo!" in the tree in front of our house this morning. First time I've heard one on our street. Seems apropos to the times.

59 seconds of kittens to soothe your weary soul

Happy #Caturday

Today the Jack Russell-Fox Terrier learned a valuable life lesson: never mess with a mamma cat in the same small room where she has stashed her kittens. Amazingly, the kittens slept through the whole altercation. #kittens

Our newfound cat hat 4 kittens yesterday and it's amazing how much that brightens up a day. 😍

Aging, ugh, embarrassing. I've started to totally, painfully miss my formative decade. Sure, it had serious problems and we all thought we'd die in a nuclear war. But we didn't hate each other so much and somehow the future felt wide open and full of promise. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtIo...

Good grief, could somebody please tell me why the theme tune to Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is running on endless loop in my head. The last time I saw an episode was like 45 years ago.

Went to the florist to buy MIL's 70th birthday flowers the other day and came home with a very sweet, very young, very pregnant stray cat. Don't know why people think driving unwanted cats out to a village and tossing them out of the car is anything but cruel and heartless.

Apropos of a tv show we were watching last night, Spouse asked how I'd feel if I discovered he had a second wife. I didn't even have to think about it. Pissed off, I said, that I had to be the one that he always dragged down to see his mother.

I forgot how hard it is to get work done when you have a cat.

Latest writerly panic attack: is there a 100% Venn diagram overlap between the meanings of water vapor and steam? #amwriting #amediting

Poor puppo got his teeth cleaned today. They had to knock him out for that. He's not at all impressed by how stoned he still is.

Oh and I should add, how is your garden going?

First cukes have sprouted, first potatoes are peeking out, tomato seedlings are going strong, and I've (hopefully not fatally prematurely) transplanted the tomatillos to the raised beds. Woot!

I keep trying to figure out why the whole entire rest of the world loves coffee so much, but my taste buds can't get past feeling bludgeoned by it.

80s REM is still the best REM.

Be the sort of person people will miss when you're gone.

What's your worst habit as a writer? Mine is cramming too many ideas into each individual single sentence. #amwriting #writing

I may be guilty of using EVOO for extra virgin olive oil when I'm scribbling recipes into my notebook, but I am immensely irritated by the scientific paper I'm reading right now that keeps using OoL for origin of life. #acronyms #ARGH

I'm a few years late to the party, but cool paper and even cooler video on the giant Moon-forming impact. That music though... www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRlh...

It's amazing how much better life is when you remember to stretch your hip flexors.

Turns out there's an int'l network of homing pigeon keepers whose members spring into action to pick up a lost pigeon, even when it's not in its home country. Though I gather Danes drive down here often with batteries of pigeons that then race home (this pigeon has a timing tag on one leg).

Woke up to a lost homing pigeon from Denmark intent on staying put with us. Then I got passport photos taken and my brown hair and olive skin blew up the software in the booth. But it worked just fine for the light blonde very white skinned woman after me. Store was apologetic but had no solution.

As far as I understand, in Germany, discos/clubs are closed by law the night before Easter (presumably on Good Friday as well), so as not to offend Christian sensibilities, yet when I turned on the tv at prime time on Easter night, The Life of Brian was showing.🤔

Everything That Needs To Be Said and Done www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

I seem to have reached that life stage where you can't stay awake in front of the television but, for the life of you, you can't fall asleep in bed.

I suppose it's too much to hope for that all this idiocy that's going to cause so much suffering will turn out to be the beginning of the end of capitalism.

The colors are off, it's missing the silver foil holograms, and the paper feels wrong, but the lights were low and Spouse is the opposite of a highly sensitive person, so, yep, he was successfully passed a fake 20. Until he tried to pay with it somewhere else the next day. Embarrassing.

Saw Mickey 17 last night and I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about it.

I spotted the year's first butterfly outside today. Woot!

Watched Adolescence last night. Totally mind blowing, from the story to the acting to the one shot take for each episode (though you get distracted at times, wondering how they will manage the next transition). So glad, though, I'm not a teen nor a parent in these social media times.

My story about an aging cyberpunk adapting to a solarpunk world is now up at @escapepod.org! It originally appeared in @press-android.bsky.social's Fighting for the Future anthology. You can read it or listen to it at escapepod.org/2025/03/06/e...

What the hell kind of world are we building for ourselves?!?! arstechnica.com/information-...