06/25/19: My best buddy got married today! When Julie and Dan announced the wedding was on a Tuesday in Indiana, they assumed that not to many people would attend. (We were going to go, even before Dan asked me to be best man.) They had this great plan: a small ceremony in Dan's sister's back yard, then a party somewhere on the north side of the city for all of Julie's family and friends, then another party on the south side for all of Dan's family and friends. Little did they know that lots of their family and friends would make the trek out to La Porte for a beautiful Tuesday wedding! Congratulations, you two, and I hope you have a long and happy life together.
The picture here is the view from the back yard last evening. I don't know that I've ever seen a rainbow where you could see both ends touching the ground. I like to think it meant that good things were going to happen for the happy couple.
06/19/19: I got my first Chinese robo-call today. My desk phone rang, and when I answered it, I heard a recording of a woman speaking Chinese. I hit the speaker button on the phone so the guys in the office could hear. We all had a chuckle, then I hung up. A few minutes later my boss's phone rang, and it was the same recording. I heard that several other people in the office had the same experience.
We all thought it was kind of funny and mildly annoying, until I was talking to someone in another building who said that her department had the same bunch of calls. She told me that one of the women in her office speaks Chinese, so I asked her what the message was. It was a message claiming that the caller had kidnapped one of the recipient's family members and was demanding ransom. Even though it still was a scam, suddenly it wasn't so funny any more.
06/09/19: I went to the Printers Row Lit Fest today. I'd been a few times over the past couple of years as a vendor, but this time I was just browsing. I had met one of my fellow writers from the Goodreads Chicago Writers group and we had a nice chat about writing and trying to sell our writing, but after that I just wandered around.
I stopped by the Illinois Woman's Press Association, the group that I had rented table space from for previous shows, and chatted with the guy running the tent. I also stopped by the table of a few of the Tamale Hut regulars. But mostly, I just looked at books.
I didn't buy much, because as I browsed, I kept thinking about all the books I already have that I haven't read yet. I did, however, see one booth that had a long wall of non-fiction books for cheap, and I took the time to browse the shelves. One book practically jumped out at me. On its yellow spine was the title A Storm in Flanders. I pulled the book down and it was the story of Ypres during the first World War. Most of you already know that the current story I'm writing is set in 1925, and the main villain is a guy known as the Belgian. I haven't given much of his back story yet, but I hinted that he was shaped by his experience in Ypres during the war! I couldn't get to the checkout table fast enough! Now I just need to find time to read it.
I didn't buy anything else, but I did see the boxed set in the picture and it made me laugh. I've not read any of Philip K. Dick's work, but if I were interested, I can see starting with a boxed set that seems to be titled "Dick Dick Dick."
06/01/19: I was puttering around the house today when I noticed that the skies had darkened considerably from the morning, so I went out on the veranda to close the windows in case of rain. As I was doing this, it really started to come down, but it wasn't rain. It was hail. BIG hail. Large chunks of ice pelted the ground and anything that was outside. It was 80 degrees just an hour ago! Now tell me that we're not screwing up our climate.
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