But there's a point at which you realize that nobody is all bad

In which cool stuff happens to people I know.

Shout-out to time_shark and David Kopaska-Merkel for independently setting the record for the highest number of Rhysling-nominated poems in a year. That's six. That's one more than me. The pressure's off.

Shout-out to spectre_general for the upcoming reprint of his poem "Jolly Bonnet" in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 19th Annual Collection. Also for making me want to subscribe to the Newfoundland Independent, even though I have no geographical or cultural excuse for this. Does a fondness for Great Big Sea count?

My brother has returned to West Hartford; but first I took him for dinner at Miya's, where he was duly stunned. For an appetizer, we got Bun Lai's famed ebibaba (shrimp wrapped in potato skins with havarti cheese and lemon dill sauce), and then he had the Water Piglet Roll (curried tuna, goat cheese, cranberries) and the Drunken Pig Roll (tempura shrimp and asparagus) while I had Romping with the Goats (tuna, papaya, goat cheese, Ethiopian berbere) and Ride the Wild Donkey (shrimp, apricot, papaya, and brie, all tempura-fried). The waitress joked that we'd bought the barnyard. For dessert, tempura-fried bananas with green tea ice cream. And it all worked. By all rights, none of it should—come on, papaya and berbere? Sushi with brie? But because this is Miya's, it all impeccably, deliciously, does.

I listened this evening to the Sisters of Mercy's Floodland (1987) and Some Girls Wander By Mistake (1992) for the first time. It's good writing music: I like. I maintain it's a total coincidence that I'm writing about characters who, from the proper angle, look a lot like vampires. I am blaming lesser_celery for all of this.