I have been reluctant to mow the lawn. First, I hate mowing the lawn, and second, the lawn is full of wild flowers, which are in turn being pollinated by my bees.

Willie is our oldest cat. The vet record says that he is 15 years and 7 months, but Erica thinks he is a year younger. He is fat and old and diabetic. I have to give him insulin twice a day. He usually spends his free time eating or sleeping. (All time for cats is free time.)

He has started to get active and enjoy the outdoors. Here is a picture that Erica took of Willie, Gracie and Ollie playing the invisible mouse game in the tall grass on the side of the house.

Here is a close-up of Willie with a crazy look in his eyes.

It was one year ago today that I entered a story into the Heinlein Short Story contest.

I read somewhere that the persons running the society have had health problems. My guess is that the society is in trouble because of lack of management. The web site is a disgrace and has not been updated in many months. I did not renew my own membership in the Heinlein Society, although I did agree with its principles.

My guess is that the contest will end soon, although it may end badly for everyone.

RAH would have had much to say about any editor that kept him waiting for a year!

Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest

The Speculative Literature Foundation has been announced the winner of the 2009 Older Writers Grant – the name will be announced June 1.

More important (at least to me), my story RepFix received an Honorable Mention.

Malon Edwards wrote:

We are also delighted to inform you that your submission, “RepFix,” has been selected as one of five Honorable Mentions for the 2009 Older Writers Grant.

We enjoyed your story very much, especially the plausible depiction of what near-future technology can be. Ten years from now, we can see some of the seedier celebrities whose careers would be ended by questionable or gray lifestyle preferences paying for something like this.

My bees are working the blackberry brambles that grow wild on my property. I got some interesting shots with the telephoto lens.

The Nyack High School class of 69 has found time to meet and remember old times every 5 years since we graduated.

It looks like this year, our 40th, there will be no reunion. If there was going to be one, I would have heard by now.

The 35th reunion was a hoot. It had quite a few people show up and there was some drama, sex, and comedy. My guess is that nobody wants a repeat of the embarrassing events of our 35th reunion.

My only hope is that someone gets the word out that sometime this summer, anyone who wants to meet up with their old friends can drop by some designated bar in Nyack.

I wonder who has the mailing list? I had a paper copy, but the cat peed on it and I used it to start a fire a few winters ago.

It would be nice to raise a glass to those who will never make another reunion. We were a good group.

This is my first reading of The Triumph of Time.

Although I had read the first three books several times as complete novels and parts as short stories in the pages of Astounding and Analog Magazine, I had somehow missed this one.

Read Review of The Triumph of Time, James Blish (1959)

We are tempted to buy this house, but it is an eight and a half hour drive, although near a large airport. It is very small, but the price is amazing and it has a guest house to keep the freeloaders at arm’s length.

The house is on the bay. The picture is from the “beach”. Beaches in Down East Maine are not usually sandy.

VisualTour

Watch Stella Monday. She got called back to Gossip Girl to reprise her roll as the bitchiest girl on the show. This pains me because she’s nothing like that, but it also good because it means that she can really act.

Hermie came to visit us last year and is finally getting used to us. He was abandoned when his owners moved away and left him. Hermie loves Erica but he is not too sure about me. I’m too big and loud.

Max, Blue, Furry and Hermie are strays that came to stay because the neighbors did not take care of them or moved away.

It’s hard to tell Hermie is a stray and prefers to stay out doors. That tuna belly is a sure sign that he is getting used to the good life.

Blue is finally warming up to me and Furry has always liked me. Max can take or leave me, but at least he doesn’t run away from me anymore.

I’ve been on FaceBook for a month or so. I’ve also been on Twitter mostly to advertise blog posts and new projects, but I deleted my MySpace account. I am not sure why I am on FaceBook. I felt at the time that I might be able to use it to get work. Since I don’t actually need a job at the moment, I have just been "going with the flow". My rule about friends is that I will not actually add a friend with whom I have never had a meaningful conversation, either in person or by way of email. I see lots of names of people that I recognize, but would not count as actual acquaintances, not to mention friends.

It seems there is definite shape to the internal topology of FaceBook. I have several major circles.

First, I have a few relatives and close friends. There are very few of these as my friends and family are not computer geeks. The ones on FaceBook do not update their profiles very often and do no use the status box much.

Next, there is the blues harmonica crowd, which has somehow expanded to the Rockland Westchester blues jam crowd. There are many people that I have jammed with years ago and many more that I recognize, but few that I think would know me. I befriended some harmonica players, but not guitar players (especially not bass players or singers). Surprisingly, Carlos Colina is not not FaceBook. He would have a million contacts. This group is very social and makes up a good chunk of my FaceBook contacts. It is by far the largest group represented when I check to see the friends suggestions.

The next crew is the Spec-Fic people. By befriending social butterflies such as J. Erwine (yes, J, you are a social butterfly, at least on FaceBook), I have been exposed to a wide circle of Spec-Fic writers, most of whom I have read, several of whom have sent my stories back with rejections, and a very few that I have actually had email conversations with. This is the most varied group by age and location. If I was as gregarious as the very friendly J. Erwine, I would have a really wide network here.

There is a smaller group of former coworkers. I have recently contacted former coworkers from Lockheed, IBM, RCC and Spherion. I tried to find my old O&R, St. Regis Paper, and Western Union friends, but they either dead or not on FaceBook. I suffer from an inability to remember names, so I have not been able to locate many people that I can visualize. I go through the people that I have not seen in more than 20 years and if I can remember them well enough (and actually liked them) I have been adding them. Several people where I work now are on FaceBook, but I have not contacted them. I would rather wait until after I leave here to decide whether or not they are friends. For now they are coworkers, which is very much a different animal.

The last group is a few people that I have had odd conversations with over the years who have found me in their email. Every once in a while one stands out and I add this singleton to my list of friends. I feel no compunction about not adding people that I can’t remember, or if I do, didn’t like. I’m not trying to reach a large audience or rack up a huge number of friends. I am social with limits.