The mouse that the cat brought in to the basement was still weakly shuffling along the floor after I chased the cat away. I wasn't sure whether it was more merciful to kill it or to put it outside, but it was way too cute to kill, so I put it in the shed under the pile of sticks. It wasn't actually ...

A few days ago, a mostly-deflated helium mylar balloon declaring "You're Special!" showed up on the ground near my morning bus stop. After a couple days of seeing it sit there, I finally sighed and decided to throw it away myself. I picked it up, and as I was deflating it, I noticed that there was a ...

This last Sunday, 'Club Floyd' (a group that plays IF games collectively on a MUD I frequent) played my own game, "The Edifice", a game I wrote when I was in grad school in 1997. This game, and the article I wrote about it, turned out to be instrumental in getting me a position at the UW years later ...

For Valentine's day this year, I sang Sara a song I wrote: (and here's a direct link.) Back last October, while walking to the bus, I was inspired, and came up with the basic 'I want you to know' motif and tune, and wrote the middle chorus (about the PhD.) I had been listening to Jonathan Coulton at ...

(This post ended up being about me, and about our cat dying. I still need to write about the aftermath and about Ellric's reaction (using 'need' in the literal sense here), so I'll probably put that in a second post.) Last week, we noticed that Ember, our black cat, was acting sick. Not eating or drinking ...

My sister has been in Florida this past month working for the Obama campaign as a bilingual field organizer. She's actually one of the few paid workers there, though she's been working 14-hour days all October with literally zero days off. And no, I asked, and she's not getting paid by the hour. She ...

The conference I was at is done, and now I'm off exploring the city:

Dr. Horrible, Act III is up. I'll probably post spoilers in a different post, but I will mention on Yoon's behalf that there are more prominent PoC this go-round.

It's Y2K week here at lpsmith central, which means we post nothing but links! First up, an absolutely astonishing Iron Man (the movie) fanfic, The Kids Aren’t All Right", written as a Vanity Fair article by that reporter woman. Well-written, insightful, funny, and pretty long. Highly recommended. On ...

So, I requested and received the Orange Box set for Christmas, mostly because I had heard it had this cool game called 'Portal' on it, and that there were also other games on it that were probably worth playing. I played and greatly enjoyed Portal, but don't have a lot more to say that I haven't already ...