Surfacing

• I'm gradually getting on top of my work-pile, digging out from my biannual code development cycle. Not as many posts here as late, but I'm still following all of you, and heaping out tiny doses of sardonic abuse on The Facebook.
  

• Our first rainstorm of the season over the weekend has put me in the mood of autumn, my favorite season, although in this part of California it is practically come and gone in a single weekend. This unusually-early rain was heralded by the even more rare thunderstorm. The crash and boom at 3 A.M. knocked the kids out of bed, but to me, that's a lullaby.
  

• We're gearing up for the second birthday of my youngest child. Just flicking through my pictures from her birthday last year makes me realize how fast it's gone. Two, and she's talking in paragraphs.

• Still plotting away on ideas for the 2009 NaNo draft, and secretly scoffing at those who would dare to wimp out. The Brigade needs you. We actually forced the NaNoWriMo powers-that-be to lock the old topic because we'd posted so much that it threatened to melt the forum software. There's another topic to take the brunt of interest until the forum wipe in October-ish. And yes, Virginia, typing with small children underfoot is possible.
  

• Not much to report by way of retrotech. I'm still hard at work knitting up another typing pad with some horrible, possessed yarn I found at the thrift store for two bits a ball. It's awful, scratchy, poop-brown and keeps pulling apart at inopportune moments. I'm looking forward to tormenting it in a very hot wash cycle.
  

• Local Craigslisters have awakened again and discovered the mile-high-club prices from MyTypewriter.com, which is probably a good thing, since it's preventing me from doing anything more than coveting from afar. Way, way afar.
  

• That said, my middle child has started piano lessons, and so we've co-opted my ugly green typing table as a keyboard stand for her. This has forced my standard machine into a box next to the bed for the time being. There's a metal stand at the thrift store, and I feel my resolve weaken every week I check and it's still there, holding up a lampshade.
  

• I'm still trying to finish up a roll of black-and-white film in a homebrew pinhole camera. (I like to have enough exposed film on hand to make suffering the stink of Caffenol worth it.) I have, however, noticed a conspicuous lack of photography on your own blogs, despite my award-winning how-to writeups. Consider yourselves glared upon with a Stern Eye.