I have to tell this story right now…

On February 29, 2016February 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting2 Comments

…before I forget it happened.

Two of the boy’s great-aunts (my aunts, in other words) were in town this weekend while he was spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s, and one of them brought a big bag full of games and toys that her grandson has outgrown to give him.

One of them is a neat little anatomy puzzle, four layers deep, where the top layer is a clothed boy, the layer underneath has no clothes, the layer under that has no skin (in other words, just the muscles), then the organs, and then the final layer is the skeleton. The skeleton isn’t a puzzle, it’s just printed on the frame that contains everything else.

The puzzle is obviously European. The instructions on the back of the box are printed in six different languages, and the naked boy on level 2 is anatomically accurate. Now, I don’t give a damn about the boy having a puzzle with a cartoon penis on it. He has a real penis he can look at whenever he wants; there will be no damage done to him by looking at a cartoon penis.

I am enough of a juvenile, however, that I was in tears laughing when, just now, after having put the puzzle together, he brought it to me and informed me that it was missing a piece:

We found the piece, by the way.

You may recall…

On February 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography3 Comments

…that I posted similar pictures from my front yard THREE days ago.

These pictures were taken five minutes ago and I am outside in a t-shirt.

Indiana, ladies and gentlemen.

In which I have seen the face of God…

On February 27, 2016February 27, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography3 Comments

…and I ate it.

I may be a vegetarian now. I don’t think I need to eat another piece of meat ever again as long as I live.

View from our hotel room

On February 27, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography3 Comments

…uninspiring. The marina is on the other side.

This kinda makes up for it:

#Weekendcoffeeshare: Anniversary Edition

On February 27, 2016February 27, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories7 Comments

newcoffee

If we were having coffee…

Shit, what are we doing having coffee? I’ve got packing to do!

This weekend (well, tonight, specifically) my lovely wife and I are celebrating our 8th year of marriage and our 2nd anniversary. (Think about what year and month it is.) We are generally homebodies and so we decided when we got married that, February already being crowded with other gifty holidays that we were ignoring, we were going to make our anniversary not a big thing other than every 4th year when the actual date of our marriage rolled around. So today we’re dropping the boy off to spend the night at his grandparents’ for the first time and heading off for an insanely expensive meal and a night at a casino.

I don’t gamble. This ought to be interesting. I have perused the menu of the place where we’re having dinner, as the meal is far more significant to me than the gambling, and have discovered that there is a $120 steak on the menu.

I may not be able to pass up the opportunity to pay a hundred and twenty dollars for a chunk of cow. And, conveniently, our tax refund showed up this morning.

But: point is, there’s a lot to be done before then, plus the actual driving, which isn’t obscenely far but the weather’s been crappy lately. So let’s slurp the coffee down; I gotta bounce. I’ll post a hotel room picture tonight, I promise.

Help me decide if I’m mad

On February 26, 2016February 26, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing9 Comments

The book on the left is from the first mass printing of THE SANCTUM OF THE SPHERE. The one on the right is from the second, which arrived yesterday, twenty days before C2E2. You may need to click to get a better idea of the magnitude of the difference:

This is the original digital image that both files were printed from. NOTHING was changed in between printing one and printing two:

I already thought that the first printing was way too orange. The second printing is substantially oranger than the first.

Gripe at CreateSpace, knowing that I probably don’t have time to be certain that a replacement will show up before the convention? See if I can quietly find another printer before the next time I need to worry about this? Or suck it up and don’t worry about it?

For whatever it’s worth, my wife, who has seen the books in person, says that it doesn’t look that bad.

(ALSO: I’m not complaining at all about this part, but I find it entertaining: the entire order, a total of 126 books stretching across all four of my titles, arrived in the last three days. It is still listed as “in production” at CreateSpace. In other words, they haven’t even updated to say that it’s shipped, and it’s all here.)

Snowpocalypse 2016, round 2

On February 25, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography5 Comments

I recognize that I basically post the same four pictures every time we get a blizzard around here. They’re still fun so I’m gonna keep doing it. 🙂

Note how the fence is basically a vertical wall of snow at this point.

Snowpocalypse 2016

On February 25, 2016February 25, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography

2nd snow day in a row, this one for basically every school in northern Indiana but one at the moment, and no one in my family attends that one stalwart school.

This is the lilac bush next to my back door, taken from inside the house, because the bush is now blocking the door:

More later; I’m going to give the neighborhood half an hour to wake up and then go clear the driveway again, because there’s a berm at the foot of the driveway and my wife still has to go to work.