Like everyone else, my family has been in isolation mode for (he cites off the top of his head because he just happens to be keeping track of it and just happened to see what today’s number was) 161 days. That’s a lot of time to be jammed right close together for anyone. To those…
My wife decided to try out her time lapse video option on a couple of monarch emergences today. It’s cool to watch it happen anyway, but in the time lapse you get a better view of watching the wings–super compressed and wrinkled at first–gradually straighten out to full size, pumped up (we think) from the…
I don’t often get photos of the sun(set) or moon that I’m ever happy with–they never look as gorgeous as what I’m seeing, and in the case of the moon usually just end up looking like bright blobs–but this one from yesterday worked out really well. I’ve added the full size of it to my…
Somewhere between about 8-15 days, the monarch chrysalis goes from green to blue to finally clear, like in the photo here. That stage means they’re going to emerge as full-on butterflies within a few hours. So cool.
More into the swing of things this month. While I tried a few things out that weren’t to my taste, I got through a fair bit: READThe Adventurers Guild: Twilight of the Elves – Zack Loran Clark and Nick EliopulosThe Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle – Rick RiordanThe Adventurers Guild: Night of Dangers –…
I’ve just been informed that I made it through the second round of the NYC Midnight Microfiction contest I updated you on recently and am on to the final round this weekend. As always, it feel good to get the approval of people who vet fiction professionally. Looking forward to the next challenge. Update you…
There’s a lot that grown-ups can learn from kids. Yes, we have bills to pay and jobs to go to (or, even more stressful for many more these days, not), and weighing the pros and cons of getting that root canal… there’s no end of big person responsibilities and issues on our minds. But too…
I write this shortly after my nine-year-old has been dropped off at a summer day camp. Your reaction to that line will range from some variation of “Hey, that’s super!” to “What the hell are you thinking?” And as a parent in these pandemic days, I’m rolling up and down through the range of those…
A couple of friends of mine forwarded this post about a deal that a TV and movie production company struck with Netflix, which will see a number of films from unrepresented writers get a solid shot at getting made. In a couple of decades of writing movie scripts and entering contests (or at least keeping…
Off and on for a couple of years, we’ve raised monarch butterflies from eggs to first flight. It’s really cool to see. There’s something satisfying and heartwarming about seeing a monarch that you raised from a tiny egg finally crawl out of its chrysalis, dry out its wings and fly away. We just got some…