We have draft! Six months and umpteen trillion words (well, it feels like it) later, we have achieved draft with the latest story! I'm so happy. I don't even care anymore that there's Diet Coke still soaking into my desk (story of clutziness excluded).

So now that we have draft, I'm procrastinating on cleaning the packing (for two weeks in Washington State with my dad) and cleaning the bathroom (because I'll be gone for two weeks in Washington with my dad and there ain't no way it'll get cleaned during that time).

I'm going to do Word #6, and try to do 7-10 later tonight because I think posting will be even spottier than usual.

Edifice. Anybody who reads this may or may not know that I'm taking my middle-aged self with my decades-old English degree back to school and I'm going for a master's in astrophysics. Aside from being a totally idiotic way to express my mid-life crisis, why might I be doing this?

Well, I think the stuff is cool and I've always loved it is one reason. Another is that I am totally amazed at the way we've been able to snag stray photons and build this amazing edifice of knowledge out of it. We see back billions of years and forward billions of years and out gazillions of miles (or kilometers for the enlightened among you) just using these photons and our brains. Does no one else realize how amazing that is?

I know we've got great works of art and, when we let ourselves, we can be kind and honest and generous of spirit, too (whatever that may mean to you), but for some reason they don't speak to me the same way. Partly because there's so much dissension around them, I think. But I like to believe that the edifice that is our knowledge of the natural world is a house that everyone can build together.