Here, belatedly, is why you don’t have a normal scheduled blog post today. For the last six months, one of my sisters and I have been planning a train trip from Minneapolis to Chicago, Chicago to LA, LA to San Francisco, San Francisco to Portland, and Portland
Read more →I’m baaaack! And I want to start by saying thank you to everyone for your condolences and sympathy, and for your understanding about the hiatus. I hadn’t expected it to go on so long, frankly, but I am my father’s executor and it is taking much longer
Read more →As some of you already know, this is a rather busy weekend for me. I lost my elder cat, Nimue, to a combination of kidney failure, hyperthyroid, and general old age (she was 19) a couple of weeks back, and on Wednesday I acquired an 11 week
Read more →As my regular readers know, I’m currently on a three-week (roughly) road trip with my father, from Chicago to San Diego for Conjecture and then back. I let my Dad plan the route. If I ever do that again, I will double-check it a week in advance and
Read more →Next week, I’m leaving on a 2-1/2 week road trip with my father. It’s not really a vacation – I’m guest of honor at Conjecture in San Diego Oct 5-7 – but Dad and I decided to take the extra time to drive out from Chicago and
Read more →I’ve had house guests for the past five days (my cousin stayed with me; my Dad stayed with my sister), and in the process of doing all the show-the-out-of-town-family-around stuff, doing the blog got kind of behind. Which is why I’m late and a bit disconnected with
Read more →Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the U.S., which is generally considered a family day, so I thought I’d talk about family and writing this time. One way or another, family is something every writer has to deal with, and it’s never nice and clean-cut. Family can be supportive,
Read more →I am home again after another four-day trip to Chicago to get my Dad’s taxes signed and meet with the lawyer about family business stuff. I am more than a little chuffed, because this is the first time in at least six years that Dad hasn’t needed
Read more →For those of you just tuning in, I have two sisters who are professional artists. The one who does theater scenery and tromp l’oeil lives here in town, and when I moved into my new house some years back, she decided to paint my closets for me.
Read more →I just (and I mean just, as in, haven’t unpacked the suitcase yet) got back from Chicago. The planned five-day trip turned into six (I should have known better than to schedule the meeting with the lawyer for the last day), but the estate tax return is
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