The ships or their passing, the fog or its drifting

Aside from the rather significant action of voting, yesterday was chiefly marked by a supermassive headache, which is why it is much nicer that today was chiefly marked by celebrating my birthday with the rest of my family. First thing, I raked a giant pile of dead leaves in my parents' side yard so that my niece could run and jump into it with a cry of "CHAAARGE!" and then paddle around as if in a crunchy maple-curling wading pool. After that, my brother cooked steaks for dinner and my father made them a sauce with shallots and brandy and for dessert my mother had baked an almond-flour cake with mandarin oranges and whipped cream and candy corn and pumpkins, the latter of which I was completely not expecting. I am now in possession of paperback copies of Forrest Reid's Denis Bracknel (1947), Rodney Garland's The Heart in Exile (1953), Barbara Hambly's Dead and Buried (2010)—for which I had been unsuccessfully scouring used book stores for four years straight—and a CD of Anna & Elizabeth's The Invisible Comes to Us (2018). Also a fabulous red-and-gold-and-black dragon T-shirt that my niece heroically did not steal. She was scrupulous about making sure that I took home my birthday balloon—she clipped it carefully to my computer bag. sholio has written me wonderful autumnal, everybody gets rained on Torchwood team fic for my birthday: "Stormwrack." As for National Coming Out Day, if people have not noticed by now that I'm queer, I don't know what else I could do, put it on my business cards? I'd have to get business cards. My brother took a picture of me with the cake.



It has been, actually, a really nice birthday weekend.