Good things lately:

• Went into the city and had a nice lunch with Heather today. Then I walked over to Borderlands to sign some books for mail order customers, and to sign stock. The weather was gorgeous and I needed the exercise of walking all over the Mission district.

• Found out today that my story "Dream Engine" is being reprinted in a print anthology collecting stories from the online magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show -- pretty cool! More details when I've got them.

• Seeing an ultrasound of our baby! They couldn't determine the sex, but it's got arms and legs and fingers and toes and a head and a body and a spine and a face, so I'm happy!

• I've been reading Theodore Sturgeon stories lately. I do that when I feel like the heart and humanity is eluding me in my own writing; it helps me reconnect with the fact that characters are the center of all my best stories. I love his writing so much. I re-read "Need" tonight, and I swear I learn something new about storytelling every time I read that piece.

Bad things lately:

• Netflix putting a hold on my account (they took it off, but I had to call and listen to their hold music for fifteen minutes before talking to a customer service rep who said, essentially, "Our bad, I'll fix it"). Hardly a major problem, except that I greatly dislike talking on the phone.

• I got a letter from the DMV a couple of days ago saying our car registration will be TERMINATED because we don't have insurance, but of course we do have insurance, and I sent proof of insurance to the e-mail address they provided... and got no response, so I can only assume it fell down a DMV e-hole. I also sent a hard copy. I'll send a fax, too. I still expect to get pulled over by a cop at some point and told my registration is suspended, because the DMV is just that efficient.

• Quarterly estimated taxes are due in a week, so my nice little savings account is going to go "whoosh" and vanish entirely. (There's a nice big chunk of novel money coming in the near-ish future, but it ain't here yet, so I'm scrounging a bit, and praying that various smaller hunks of writing income I'm expecting come sooner rather than later.)

• I only wrote 3,200 words on my novel today, because I wasn't home for most of the day, and didn't start working until after 4 p.m. I think they're pretty good words -- Rondeau kicked some ass -- but I'm falling increasingly behind on my self-imposed schedule. With luck I'll be productive next week and this weekend and make up the shortfall. Manuscript stands at 30,000 words now.

• The landlord's dog -- which is a sweet dog, but still -- can't suffer a flower pot to live, and she destroyed most of the lovely plantings Heather did last weekend. I tried to replant the few flowers I found scattered on the concrete, but they'll just be dug up again soon, I suspect.

• And, of course, my wife is leaving town for nine days on Saturday, which will be a bummer. I'm very glad she's going to the workshop, and I think it'll do great things for her writing, and I hope she has a super fun time, but I'm going to be depressed when she's gone, because she's the brightest thing in my life, every single day. On the bright side, I'll get a lot of writing done, I'm sure, because that's what I've always tended to do when faced with a solitary evening.

So, some good, some bad. Yep. It's a life.