It is currently raining quite hard outside, which makes me question the forecasts of only 1" of rain today. Since most of the rivers in the northwest portion of the state are still overflowing, and flooding is still widespread, this rainfall might make the situation worse, even though the flooding had started receding the past two days.

Recently I finished writing my second first draft of a novel since retiring last June, which is a pretty good pace. In the meantime, I have also started a long-range project which, if I complete it, should result in my posting a daily blog next year devoted to science fiction, with the ultimate goal of compiling another nonfiction book. When I retired, I had originally planned to take a year off, then seriously consider doing some adjunct teaching in a local college. But as my writing more and more becomes almost a fulltime job, it is looking less likely that I will ever return to teaching.

Which makes it more urgent that I do things on a regular basis to keep exercising my mind. I have been doing 3 things regularly: study a bit of advanced math (including doing all the proofs assigned in the book), learn to draw (which I started doing about a decade ago, but postponed it for lack of time), and learn another language (I am currently refreshing my French in anticipation of meeting my nephew’s wife-to-be’s French-speaking family in Spain in May, but afterwards I will return to Chinese). I have also been doing some old math competitions and Games Magazine puzzle books, which are fun to do while watching basketball games. Life is good...

Currently Reading: China Miéville is one of the finest current fantasy writers. His novel Perdito Street Station was my favorite novel of the 2000s, and his recent novel The City & The City is a fantasy-tinged noir mystery which received considerable acclaim when it was first published, including several best-of-the-year awards. So far it is fascinating reading.

Currently Listening: I haven’t listened much to David Bowie recently, even though he continues to record fine music intermingled with not-so-fine music. But I’ve gone back 35 years to David Live which contains live renditions of songs from his very best mid-70s albums.