The obsessive side of me judges summer partly by how much I accomplish. In this first week I have finished editing both the Passing Scene and Wondrous Stories portions of the June Visions of Paradise. PS is the personal portion, mostly containing excerpts from my journal and blog for the past six months. WS is the serious portion, filled with book reviews and articles, mostly on science fiction and historical fiction.

Yesterday I finished editing a far-future novelette, which fills in portions of my future timeline which I began creating 30 years ago. Ironically, last night while I was reading a novel by China Miéville called The Iron Council, I realized the plot of the story bridging this novelette and one I wrote a few years ago which takes place about 20 years previously. I hope to start that story around editing the Tibet book this summer.

My computer has been driving me crazy for a long time for various reasons. Now it has gotten infected, so Alan and I have decided the time has come to reformat it. Thus I have been spending time the past few days saving files, mostly by burning them. At times it is good that I am obsessive about backing-up files, since I have multiple copies of everything I do, on the hard drive, on floppy disks, and on cds. I also have an external drive, but I do not want to save anything on it right now in case it gets infected. I am not so worried about floppies or cds since my anti-virus will scan them when I use them, but if my external drive gets infected then it too will need to be wiped, and I have all our pictures on it.

Jean and I watched Martin Scorcese’s movie The Aviator, the biography of tortured genius Howard Hughes. It was a good movie. Jean and I recall parts of it, such as his famous plane The Spruce Goose, but much of it was new to us. I should remember Hughes whenever my mild hypochondria threatens to get out of control. ☺

We’re having a barbecue today for Fourth of July, an excuse to bring some family and friends here to eat our hearts out. Isn’t summer grand?