96

My father turns 96 today. If that were his only accomplishment it would be pretty cool. But he's also an artist, a writer, a designer, a former volunteer EMT, a life-long autodidact, and raconteur. The best character reference I can give for him (aside from the fact that he is kind of a character) is that when he started to lose his vision to macular degeneration about a dozen years ago he did not repine--although it must have been shattering for a man whose whole life has been wrapped up in the visual arts--but instead wrote about it: one book which he called Confessions of a Macular Degenerate, and another called Vision Junkie, which he co-wrote with his eye doctor at Mass General. Dad's a little creaky these days, but at 96 I'd say he deserves to be. He's got his sights set (so to speak) on 100, and I wouldn't get in his way if I were you. He's a man of strength and determination.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

And the Look in Her Eye Seemed to Say to the Sky

I used to consider myself reasonably tech-ish, in a "no, I don't have time to learn HTML although I probably should, but life short and I need to read something now" sort of way. When I met the Spouse I was the computer geek of the family. Now, like Summer and Smoke, I go to him for most of my tech-nerd needs. All this by way of saying that I'm having a long, protracted battle with the underlying architecture of the Book View Cafe site, trying to get my stories up there without importing all the code that my Mac and Word want to dump in. There are several work arounds, I'm just waiting for people who Know More Than I to get back to me and let me know if my work arounds, um, worked.

Meanwhile, I'm going to the library downtown to find a copy of The Good Wife's Guide, which matociquala mentioned the other day. It sounds like it might be one of those damned indispensible resources for the current WIP, but I'm not spending $30 on it until I can confirm that. These are desperate times, Mrs. Lovett, and desperate times require desperate measures.