author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

There are no wrong decisions. This is very important to remember. I keep forgetting, which causes me no end of problems until I remember it again.

For a little while, I was working through the exercises in Creativity Rules! (A Writer's Workbook) by John Vorhaus. I never made it all the way through the book. Partially due to a feeling that the exercises were becoming less relevant to my particular practice, and partially due to some irreconcilable issues I came to have with the author's perspective, I fell out of the habit and eventually put the book aside.

Nevertheless, that book did introduce me to a couple of eternal verities that I have tried to hold onto. To wit:

• All writing is good writing. Any writing is more writing than you had before.
• Today's goal: Be a better writer than I was yesterday.
• Writing means deciding, often arbitrarily, between infinite possibilities.
• There are no wrong decisions.

It's that last bit I have to keep remembering. Of late, my freewriting sessions have devolved into circumlocution when they ought to be zeroing in on specifics. "The main character investigates too closely into some mystery," I'll write, "which results in he or she uncovering a Terrible Truth which they will always wish they'd never learned." OK, fine, but what's the mystery? What's the truth? Who is the character?

And that's where I'll stall out--I don't want to make any decisions. I'm afraid I'll make the wrong decision. I'll write myself into a corner. I won't know what I'm writing about. If the mystery and the terrible truth involve a corporate outfit, I'll trip over my total ignorance of corporate culture. If it's an IT environment, my memory of how that goes is more than ten years outdated. And that's before I consider the implications of what gender I make the main character, or what economic background, or what their particular role is in the environment where they are investigating the mystery, and...

And paralysis.

Which is silly, because, as I must constantly remind myself, there are no wrong decisions. Any decision leads to story. Different decisions lead to different stories. And no decision is final! Sure, each decision narrows the possibilities available within any one story. Once I decide to make the main character a trust-fund baby used to getting his own way at his father's bank, I no longer have the option of making her a woman who has clawed her way out from poverty and up the corporate latter. But after writing for twenty-five minutes about the banker's son, I can open up a new blank document, reset my timer, and write for twenty-five minutes about the self-made woman. Different decisions lead to different stories, and I can write them all.

So I just have to remind myself: Angst over arbitrary decisions is just another way to put off the actual act of writing. It's one of the sneaky ways Resistance and Avoidance manage to crash the productivity party. The moment I notice that I'm writing around the story idea instead of writing it down, that's when I need to convert all that circumlocution into a game of Mad Libs. "[Character] investigates [mystery] in [some corporate environment] and discovers [the horrible truth]... OK, make that 'college intern,' 'weekly meetings she's not invited to,' and 'demonic invocation.' Go! ... OK, now let's try it again with 'newly appointed interim director,' 'shameful inefficiencies concerning environmental studies,' and 'deaths being covered up in appalling numbers'. Wait, doesn't that sound kind of familiar? Who cares, play with it anyway."

Point is, it's a game of fill-in-the-blanks, and there are no wrong answers. Fill in the blanks more or less at random. Write about the results, in good faith and with actual scenes and characters and details. Then fill the blanks again, and write those scenes and characters and details.

Every decision is the right decision, so long as it's the "write" decision.

...And there's your cheesy inspirational slogan for the week. You're welcome!

...and tomorrow it's going to take the wheel. We have an eight hour drive ahead of us, followed by quite possibly a visit to the National Museum of Roller Skating (if we get to Lincoln in time, which is, alas, not likely) and, if we've still got any energy, a session of recreational rolling around at the Skate Zone (which is pretty definite).

And then we'll be competing against the No Coast Derby Girls on Saturday. Which is the whole point of the trip.

I'm also looking at composing and publishing the June 2015 Week 2 Friday Fictionette in the car. Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to count on that. Well, that was before the week got squandered on--well, this and that. Mostly this, a little of that. We'll see.

And what about Week 1? Well, it's up. Finally. "You Could Go a Long Way in Those Shoes" is kind of comedy, kind of horror, and kind of vaguely influenced by having recently read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The writing prompts for the original freewriting session were "Underground Railroad" and "cleats." It wound up having much to do with the importance of good running shoes in scoping out the possibilities of a cross-continental subterranean passenger railroad system.

I'm undecided whether the world of this fictionette is fantasy or science fiction. It's comparable to present day Earth in many ways, including the technological, but the entire continent which provides the story's setting has sort of a basement floor. I toyed with the idea of making it a post-space-colonization planet, but I was honestly too lazy to come up with any concrete details about the history of space travel and the future tech they'd have to have. So it's more sort of an alternate Earth on an alternate North America with less urban sprawl. (Which seems like a plot hole. There'd be a very good incentive for urban centers to sprawl all about the place, as you will see.) In any case, I'd like to write more in this setting, once I know a little bit more about the setting.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to say I met one of my goals with the June 5 fictionette: It's not just a story-like object. It's actually a complete story. Enjoy!

This week is going to be a tight week for me, even if I'm scrupulous about my schedule and use every hour to its fullest. The work days are squeezed between two extremely full derby weekends, with mid-year travel team try-outs just behind and a double-header in Nebraska coming up. Thus Friday will find me on the road all day long. This time I know better than to expect writing to happen in the car.

Knowing that, I still managed to be late with the June 5 Friday Fictionette. It's coming, it's imminent, it's been drafted--it's just that if I stay up until all hours finishing it tonight, I reduce my chances of getting all my work done tomorrow. Schedule scrupulosity cannot happen if I eff up the whole bed-by-one, up-by-eight thing. So.

I haven't got its title yet--my hope is that will come to me in my sleep--but it's about a sort of science fiction/fantasy version of David Moffat, whose proposed railroad will cross under the continental divide rather than over it. And there will, for once, actually be an ending rather than a cliffhanger to nowhere. Rejoice!

More tomorrow. Must engage in bedtime procedures right now.

A recipe! Which epiphanized out of a conversation on the drive home from roller derby practice. Sort of a rolling sequence of epiphanies: "Oh, yeah! Shepherd's pie! That exists, doesn't it? Such that I can actually make it! Hey! I actually have all the ingredients at home right now! I am so very much making it tonight."

OK, well, I did not in fact have mutton on hand. I had ground beef. Perfectly acceptable.

The rest of the conversation involved us collaborating on a recipe, which I proceeded to polish into practicality the moment I got home. It wound up going something like this:

About a pound of russet potatoes. Put them in to boil. Their fate is to be mashed.

1 pound ground beef. Defrost it in the microwave. (I have a microwave now. Haven't had one in about 15 years.) Brown in a pan. No oil or butter - just let its own juices do the work. When there's only a small amount of raw pink left, remove the meat to another container, leaving the fatty juices in the pan.

1 medium onion, or half a large one. 3 ribs celery. Sautee these in the burger juices until soft and, optionally, caramelized around the edges.

A good handful parsley, chopped. A good fingerful minced garlic out the jar. Splashes soy sauce, worchestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar to taste. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir into the ground beef while the aromatics are sauteeing.

About as many frozen peas as looks right when you mix it into the ground beef mixture. Probably about a cup. If it looks like it needs more, add more. You know what kind of peas-to-meat ratio you like. Make it happen.

Three scallions, chopped. Heavy whipping cream as needed for creamy texture. However much shredded parmesan cheese you like. Another good fingerful of minced garlic. These are what go into the potatoes, when you mash your potatoes. Well, when I mash my potatoes, anyway. I leave the skins on, by the way.

Spread meat mixture in an even layer on bottom of 9 x 13 baking pan. Pyrex-style is best; you want to be able to see through the sides. Spread mashed potatoes in an even layer on top. Make fun designs in the top of the mashed potatoes with a fork.

Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until it's been bubbling up from the bottom of the pan for a good few minutes. (This is why I like see-through baking pans.)

Move pan to top rack, set oven to a high broil, and broil for about 5 minutes or until the mashed potatoes have got a nice golden-brown crust on them. This will make your fun fork designs stand out nicely.

Let cool for about ten minutes or until you can't stand it anymore. Devour. Accompany with a delicious dark beer if you do that sort of thing. I do that sort of thing. It's a Tommyknocker Cocoa Porter.

Today was one of those fresh summer days that wants to come in through every window. I opened up the patio door and the office window, which have screens. I opened up the front door, which, oddly, doesn't; it has something I want to call a screen door, but it has no actual screens in it. It has three glass panels. I figured out how to slide one of them up, but, again, there's no screen. One must choose between air in or bugs out. One cannot have both, at least not until I install a screen or just replace the door.

Replacing the "screen" door would probably be fine. Its latch is broken, too, such that it's difficult to get it to latch shut from the inside and entirely impossible from the outside.

Nevermind! The fresh summer day came in by the patio door and the office window, and extra light came in by the not-really-a-screen-door, and I found the energy to get some household chores done. Laundry, dishes, taking out the recyclables. Topping off the bird feeder. Attempting to rescue spinach seedlings that got dug up in the night, probably by that jerk the squirrel. (Seriously, I need to just bring all the plants in overnight. This is ridiculous.)

I even took a rag and some lemon oil and my spinning wheel outside, and I made a first pass at cleaning off the storage unit grime. All the dust came off, but there are stubborn stains on the treadles, probably from years of having that little bottle of spinning wheel oil hanging upside and dripping onto them. Still, some progress was made. At least the poor thing is no longer gross to handle.

What I'd really like to do is invite fiber-geek friends over and have a little spin-in on that front patio. Now that the summer heat has reached us, it's no longer a dim and freezing cold dungeon. But it's not so full of sun as to be wearying, either. And I've got happy little shade-tolerant plants hanging out there, the decade-old spaths and the new baskets of impatiens and begonias. It would be lovely to sit out there and sip tea and spin yarn (literally) and also spin yarns (figuratively).

Alas, I didn't get to any spinning today. Nor the piano. Mostly I spent the afternoon fighting with Patreon's new input interface while turning "Because You Weren't There" into the May 2015 Fictionette Freebie. The new interface is, in theory, a great improvement over the old. Not only can you input rich text via HTML now, but you can also upload new attachments to, and change out the image of, an existing creation. (You couldn't do that before. I KNOW.) However, there's a bug such that depending on the click path you use to get to the edit interface, the "save" button might not actually save your changes. That is, if you click through to a single post view, and then click Edit, you're fine. But if you click the Edit button attached to the post where it appears as an item in your posts stream, it will be a no-go.

But the post I wanted to edit--the plain-text excerpt of the Fictionette--I had created through the Activity Stream interface rather than through the Creations interface. Which isn't a distinction that ought to matter, since the new interface files both of them under "Creator Posts" as opposed to "All Posts" (that is, posts you posted, or messages your Patrons posted to you). But it matters this much: Posts created under the Activity Stream rubric appear to no longer have an Edit button within the single post view. I can only get in to edit them via the button on the item in the posts stream. Which click path, as I said, leads to a non-functional Save Post button.

Also, have I mentioned that since the interface update, some Patron-only posts got set to Accessible By Everyone? And probably vice versa? Pardon me while I go double-check the status of every single item in my archive since September 2014. Whee.

Finally, after beating my head against that brick wall for far too long, I struck a compromise. I gave up on trying to edit the post, and just created a whole damn new one, with the full text in HMTL and the links to the PDF and MP3 and also the announcement that it was now free for all to download regardless of your pledge tier or Patron status. And I emailed Patreon's support staff with the bug report, which hopefully isn't too rambling for them to understand. The above two paragraphs should give an idea of whether I succeeded; the email was more rambling than that, I fear. Then, at last, I turned my attention to Other Matters.

Which, it being now an hour until I had to leave for roller derby practice, meant things like getting into my derby clothes, cooking myself dinner, packing up my skate gear, and things like that.

Here's hoping tomorrow's work day doesn't get whittled away by technological frustrations like today's did. And that I get all the things done. And still get time to spin yarn and practice piano and maybe play a little on Puzzle Pirates too. And read blogs. And go for a long walk around Sale Lake. And...

Optimism! It's what's for midnight snackies!

On the occasion of Shuttles Spindles Skeins's monthly spin-in-and-knit-in, I brought home my spinning wheel and fiber stash from our rented storage unit. Some of the fiber appears to have sustained new moth activity, so none of it's coming into the house until I've had a chance to evaluate, treat, and adequately store each individually. Until then, it stays in our storage closet in the parking garage.

Exception #1: My portion of the brown fleece off Sheepfeathers Farm's "Daphne" seems to have escaped the moths' hunger entirely. I pawed through it and found no visible eggs, "confetti" debris, or broken fibers. Still, it was stored close to the other fibers, so it gets put into several gallon-sized resealable bags, and they go inside a lidded plastic bin of their own.

Exception #2: What is left of the half-fleece of black lamb's wool (probably CVM) after I discovered moths in it last year, I've felt confident assuming it's clean of moths now. This is because at the time of the moth discovery, I went into emergency anti-month action. All the bits that had been chewed on got thrown into the compost. What remained, about three-fourths of the original amount of wool, got washed in very hot water. Then it all went out on the balcony to dry and then to freeze and thaw repeatedly at the mercy of the incoming winter. Then it all got put into a big black plastic bag, which got aggressively tied closed. As the bag had no holes in it that I could find, I presumed the wool clean enough to take to the spin-in without endangering others' fiber.

Discovering moths in fiber that I'd last touched months or even years ago is doubly distressing. First off, I paid good money for that wool, I maybe already put good effort into washing it and spinning it, and I had plans for its potential. That potential has now been trashed, or at least significantly curtailed. Secondly, it feels like a rebuke: "If you'd only washed and spun and knit me sooner, instead of procrastinating like you always do, this wouldn't have happened." (The parallel with long-neglected writing projects is an exercise left to the reader.)

Taking action helps. Spinning a good ten or fifteen locks of the black lamb at the spin-in tonight, that helps. Bringing the fiber home and enacting a plan to treat and store it all correctly, that helps too. Deciding that I will spin Every! Single! Day! helps, too, but is probably overly optimistic of me. I haven't actually practiced the piano since bringing the bench home from repair. But I could if I wanted to! And now that the spinning wheel and drop-spindles are home, spinning is a possibility too.

Bunch of other things came home: more sheet music, a couple boxes of T-shirts and jeans waiting to be turned into quilts, all but one of the musical instruments, and a couple of boxes of Random Things. I'm daunted by how much is still in there, though. When we were in the throes of house-moving, we promised ourselves we'd clear out of the rented storage unit in six weeks. But it took us six weeks just to feel like we'd put enough stuff away to justify bringing more stuff into the house. So we're behind schedule on it. So what else is new.

But the spinning wheel is home. So is the majority of the sheet music. These things make me happy.

So I took today off. It's the fifth Friday; I get to do that on fifth Fridays. Especially in the case of a day completely without scheduled obligations and nobody home but me. I pretty much slept until I woke up, then grabbed a book of Cordwainer Smith short stories and read myself back to sleep. It was glorious.

In between short stories, there were breaks for watching grackles raid the bird feeder. The bird feeder is the sort with a nut-and-seed compartment in the middle and suet cake compartments on either side. The grackles like the suet cakes, especially the one that came labeled "no-melt formula." They have a Method. It goes something like this:

1. Land on the roof to scout out the scene.
2. Announce intentions via a single chirp/croak.
3. Flap over to the feeder and stuff beak as full as possible with suet cake crumbs.
4. Flap down to railing or floor of balcony to spit out the loot.
5. Eat the loot daintily from this secondary location.
6. Except for the last crumb, which they will take away with them into the trees.

Basically, they're like diners at an all-you-can-eat buffet who still get to take leftovers home in the doggie bag. It's hilarious. I love watching them strut around the balcony, all crow-like, full of exaggerated decorum.

The house finches are hilarious, too, especially when they arrive in groups, scolding and fluttering at each other in a mobile, airborne quarrel. They look like they're fighting over who gets the best spot on the feeder. They may also be engaging in their typical mating ritual, which as far as I can tell involves the male finch showing off how fantastically red his head and butt are, and the female finch demonstrating how fantastically fed up with him she is.

Sparrows show up less frequently and act a little shy. They're more easily scared off by my movements inside the house, and they give way to the finches without argument. Strikes me as weird, considering that most of my interactions with sparrows involve them mobbing my feet on outdoor patios at cafes and demanding to know whether I'm done with that muffin.

And then there's this little tiny bird, maybe two-thirds the size of a sparrow, that I still haven't managed to get a good look at yet. It makes an aggrieved, high-pitched, descending "peep!" noise and hops around the tree branches with a movement that reminds me of the way woodpeckers hop around on tree trunks. It has a relatively thin tail for its size, which is all I can see when it's on the other side of the bird feeder from me. The moment I try to get a better view, that sucker is gone.

So that's about all I've been doing today. Reading, watching birds, eating leftovers, and fighting off that vague sense of guilt for not having spent today Getting Things Done. It has been long and arduous, that fight, but I think I am winning.

I've been kind of spotty in my blogging lately. It's kind of directly related to being kind of spotty in my writing. It gets kind of embarrassing to have nothing writing-wise to talk about (except the odd Fictionette) on a blog that is all about actually writing.

(I appear to have used up my quota of "kinda"s for this blog pot. So soon! How distressing.)

So today I'm going to talk about writing. About me and writing. And the ideal of writing anywhere.

It's a good ideal. It goes hand in hand with writing at any time. Basically, the idea is this: Be open to getting some writing in, even if all you've got are fifteen minutes in the dentist's waiting room.

Or, in this case, an hour and a half at the Longmont YMCA.

I was going to the Longmont YMCA because that's where roller derby scrimmage was tonight. And I was there super early because I'd come directly over from bringing John to the airport. Once upon a time, I went straight from the airport to practice in Longmont with what looked like oodles of time to spare, but instead I ended up in the worst and longest traffic jam ever on I-25 (seriously, it started at the I-70 exit for I-225, and it continued until at least the I-25 exit for Highway 52) and I in fact arrived about an hour late. So I learned not to count on the drive being reasonable. I also learned to take the E-470 toll road whenever possible, which is what I did today, which is why I got to 6:30 practice at about 5:00 PM.

I perhaps should have stayed in the car and did my writing there. But I can't get the YMCA's wi-fi hotspot signal from the parking lot (this is very important if you need to look up definitions for your freewriting word prompts; "paramnesia" is a toughie), and also the lounge by the pool was theoretically a more comfortable place to hang out with laptop and spiral notebook.

Which is how I came to be attempting to scribble in a comfy arm chair in a lounge overcrowded with disappointed kids hoping against hope that the lightning-related cancelation of their swim class this afternoon might yet be rescinded.

I can forgive the five-year-old (that's an estimate) who tried to run through my leg, and kept trying even after he got himself hooked on my ankle. Five-year-olds are not, as a rule, very aware. When they run, they are focused very closely on whatever they are running toward (or away from) at the expense of pretty much everything else, including quiet women sitting in armchairs trying to write.

I am less inclined to forgive the grown-ass men, or at the very least young men in their latter teens (once you get your full growth I'm no good at estimating, I just assume you're "my age," which is a very broad category as I reckon these things) who simply couldn't be bothered to avoid kicking me in the feet as they walked past.

"Apparently that's my superpower," I lamented to a teammate at scrimmage later. "When I'm out in public, I'm entirely invisible."

"Which is great if you're a spy," she replied.

"But not so great if you just want to listen to the band at the bar and not have passing drunks shove elbows into your gut."

"It's OK, though. You're infiltrating the scene."

I dig this suggestion. I would like to apply it to all future awkward social interactons. I'm not being ignored, disrespected, walked on and kicked. I'm successfully infiltrating the scene. Meanwhile, I am taking detailed notes on my marks' behavior, just like Harriet the Spy.

It's amazing what a change of narrative can do.

Because it's about a mural depicting a shipwreck. It's called "Shipwreck in Progress." It's also about family relations, and maybe doomsday.

And now I have almost two whole weeks to prepare the next Friday Fictionette because May 2015 is a month with five Fridays in it, and I get fifth Fridays off. Nyah!

So I've changed my mind about my hummingbird visitor. Now I think it's most likely a male black-chinned hummingbird who looked red-throated only because I was seeing its neck feathers through the optical illusion of its wing-blur. In any case, it's been back countless times and seems to like what I've got on offer, but it still tries to drink out of the songbird feeder from time to time.

I tried to doctor up the songbird feeder with chili powder, because I've just about had it with the squirrel that it's attracted. It was cute at first, but when it's sitting in the planter and eating the leaves off the just-sprouted sunflower seedlings, it's just not funny anymore. The planter was already propped up on top of a bucket, but that sucker actually scrabbled up the sliding glass door to get into it. I have no idea how, but the noise its claws made on the steel frame of the door woke me up in time to watch it visiting the "salad bar." Now the planter has been moved further away from the wall, and what seedlings remain have been transplanted indoors to give them a chance to grow a few more leaves.

Today was the first sunny day I'd seen in what feels like weeks. It was sunny from morning right up until early afternoon, when we got a hailstorm. But before that I got to open up windows and doors and just let that warm air in, carrying with it all the songs of the birds and the occasional mew of the neighbor's adorable and affectionate black cat.

At one point I heard bagpipes, and I went out to hear them better. It's Memorial Day, and we live within view of a large funeral lawn with many a war veteran's tomb. It was pleasant, if solemn, to stand in the sun with my mug of tea and listen to the pipes playing "Amazing Grace," occasionally interrupted by the sound of the fighter planes doing their flyovers.

I did my Morning Pages late, and I did them on the back patio. In addition to sun and songbirds, there was the smell of a propane grill. Down on the lawn across the fence, some neighbors in the next condominium campus were having a picnic. When the big guy in the football shirt said, "Who wants more brats?" I very nearly called out, "Me!" They smelled that good.

And that's about all I've got. Lazy holiday Monday, a new Fictionette, and a bunch of bird-and-squirrel TV. I hope your Monday has been as pleasant. Cheers!

Let's concentrate on the positive. We got the piano tuned today! And the piano bench is sort of fixed, enough to sit on at least; Monday I hope to have it fixed in a more permanent fashion. So I sat down and played the piano today for the first time since we moved. Since months before we moved, in fact.

In the piano bench, which I emptied out in order to fix the piano bench, there's a heap of sheet music that belonged, I think, to one of my aunts. I suspect they were handed down to her from a previous generation. There is a Victor Herbert songbook with pieces whose copyrights range from MCMVI to MCMXXXIII. Victor Herbert died in MCMXXIV, which is the copyright date on a couple of the songs in the book.) I played through one of them--as best I can, that is, which is to say slowly and with many pauses to figure out the next chord. It was pretty dang melodramatic. I think it was supposed to be a cheerful song, though.

In other cheerful news, we have a hummingbird. Or multiple hummingbirds, I don't know. They jingle-buzz around the building, on both sides, and you can often catch sight of one zipping from tree to tree. I hung a feeder outside my office window in hopes of having hummingbirds visit me while I write, but almost a week went by and they didn't find it. Then, today, a hummingbird buzzed our patio window--just flew right into the balcony space and hovered meaningfully in front of the sliding glass door. "All right, already," I said, and moved the feeder from the office window to the patio. And now we have a new friend.

Back when we lived in Oregon, we had a hummingbird feeder outside the kitchen window. We weren't always vigilant about keeping it full, but the hummingbirds were not shy about telling us it had run dry. They'd start buzzing every other window of the house, upstairs and down, hovering outside the glass and going vvvrrrreeeee! in a pointed kind of way. I think today's visitor was doing something like that.

I brought a pair of cheap field glasses to the bedside so I could get a closer look next time the hummer came in for a sip (which it did about once every 20 minutes for the rest of the afternoon), but I haven't quite identified the species. It's got a gray-or-green body, a white-or-light-gray chest, and a reddish throat, which could be one of several species that WhatBird.com suggests for Colorado. My best guess is a male broad-tailed hummingbird. I suppose it could also be a calliope, but I didn't notice that striping/striation pattern in the red/maroon throat of my visitor. (WhatBird.com does not suggest the ruby-throated hummingbird this far west.)

One more happy thought: Roller derby tomorrow! Our first home bout of the season--at least, this will be the first competitive event we're hosting in 2015. The January event was a mix-up tournament. Tomorrow's will feature actual rated-and-ranked teams. I'll be skating with the Bombshells against the visiting team from Pueblo in the first bout of the evening--that'll start at 6:00 PM, with the frontman for Big Head Todd and the Monsters as the celebrity whistleblower starting the first jam for us. Right after that, our All Stars will take on Denver Roller Derby's Bruising Altitude.

I was going to put an article up on AXS.com about the event, but literally minutes before I was ready to upload the article, I got an email from AXS saying that they would no longer accept "game-related sports news or timely recaps." Argh. I was not prepared to try to turn it into some sort of "5 things to watch for" listicle at this late date, either, so I just let it go. You get this blog post instead.

$15 at the door! Doors open at 5:30! I'm assuming Georgia Boys will be there, with barbecue and mac & cheese for all. I know there will be lots of local beers and distilled spirits for the grown-ups. Come watch me skate, and then come see me at the fund raiser table during the All Stars bout (at halftime, of course; otherwise you should be watching the All Stars skate, because they are awesome) and help us keep our travel fund in the black! And speaking of the All Stars, keep your eyes on them this season. Latest WFTDA rankings put them at #33, which means this year may well be Boulder's D1 debut.

Meanwhile, it's Friday, and there is a conspicuous absence of Fictionette. I hope to get it up this weekend (where have we heard that tale before? but I really, really mean it this time. Well, Monday for sure). It was taking me longer tonight than I'd budgeted for, and it didn't seem wise to stay up late with such a big day looming over me tomorrow. So you will just have to stay tuned for tales of painted shipwrecks and sinister countdowns, I'm afraid.