Chris Herdt graduated on Saturday. I believe he earned a Masters' of Engineering from The University of Pennsylvania. 

As (he is) a member of OPW, I recommend that he receive the special duckspensation to post more than once in a 24-hour period. 

Muthafuckin' PENN, y'all. 

Roadie Wife is tired. 

I'm sick of people getting killed by police. 

I'm sick of income inequality. 

I'm sick of police having inadequate resources and responding to conflicts with inexplicable and unjustified violence. 

I'm of the systems that cause poor people to have shitty options, commit crimes and/or have children they can't afford to raise. 

I'm sick of people feeling bad because they feel different. 

I'm sick of girls in Lily Pulitzer dresses on green lawns and bankers getting rich while there's drought and poverty. 

I'm sick of religions that claim there's only one set of answers and only one path to goodness. 

When you consider the fact that in 30 years, most of the most expensive coastal property in the country will be under water, while a significant portion of our nation will be drying to dust, why are we worrying about race, gender, preference or interest rates? 

I'm ready for the Vogons to eradicate us. Build a new space highway, fuckers. Write your horrible poetry. 

All day I've felt a feathery feeling in my spine because of what happened to Freddie Gray. 

At the gym today, I was working out on a chest press machine, and, as you do, in between sets, was looking around. I watched a woman collect her toddler daughter from the gym daycare.

This tiny creature, her smooshy plump cheeks red, her light brown hair awry (I imagine she'd just woken from a nap), one hand held by her mother (who was bending over a lot to accommodate their height difference), spotted a Very Large Man, muscled bare arms totally inked, working out hard on a lat pull-down machine by the door to the daycare. 

And then rays of sunshine and rainbows and unicorns burst out of her face, and she enthusiastically waved her free tiny chubby hand at him, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

He turned his head to look at her, smiling. Her delight made me laugh out loud. After a moment, her mother carefully guided her down the steps toward me. The girl concentrated hard on those steps. To one so small, they were an ocean to cross. Her mother easily could have just picked her up and carried her out, but instead was giving her the opportunity to navigate those steps on her own.

I started working out again, and as they grew slowly near, I couldn't help but turn my head to watch her pass.

And she spotted me. And she unleashed those rays of sunshine, rainbows and unicorns, full force.  And I got the royal wave. 

Yesterday I spent $6 on a vintage 1936 cookbook I already have a copy of: "All About Home Baking", by the General Foods Corp.

But I couldn't resist this one. It's full of the previous owners handwritten recipes (Daffodil Cake, Crazy Choc Cake, for example), and also has newspaper recipes and recipes typed on onion skin paper pasted inside. 

Such evidence of a cookbook that was well-loved and used is irresistible.

Plus I always feel sorry for these orphan books, their previous owners dead and gone. They need homes, and I am apparently the sap to give them one.

Anyway, here's one of the recipes. I love the WW II aspect of this cake, as it places it so well in a specific time and place. I love how, apparently, putting the word "Victory" in front of a recipe automatically makes it patriotic and American and...good and noble and assuring of doing one's part. 

Wish I could post more than one picture here--pasted underneath this is another article with recipes, which talks about how "sugar rationing is daily closer to becoming a reality". Maybe I'll post that one tomorrow.

And damn, but doesn't this banana cake sound good? I'm actually thinking of trying to make it.

A most fantastic lunch with Kat at Oddfellows in Seattle. Baked egg dish. With potatoes? Spinach? I think? I don't know, it was just so good.

Vintage muffin tin I bought at the estate sale of Harvena Richter, the daughter of writer Conrad Richter (and herself a writer) a few years ago, and the cornbread muffins I made for Thanksgiving a few years ago. I loved the name "Muffinaire" so much plus I just love vintage kitcheny things, I had to get it. And these make "normal" sized muffins, not giant baby-head size ones like people expect these days.

Today I got another rejection e-mail (some festival in South Carolina) and wrote 18 pages on the new WIP. None of it is long hand, I'm typing from the outline and notes. 

Random idea that came up in my head while writing:

a character's 4 year old son sees slot machines for the first time on an airport layover in Las Vegas while flying to visit his grandparents. He is so taken with them that for Halloween he wants to be a slot machine. So, he and his mother make a costume out of cardboard boxes and paper and tape and aluminum foil and whatever else they can find. His mom wants to dress up as something appropriately casino-themed to go with him. While she's surfing the internet trying to find a way to make a card dealer costume that looks interesting, she finds that someone is selling a Vegas showgirl costume on eBay. 

The Vegas showgirl costume is satirical; it's a gold halter top and boy shorts decorated with coins, and then the headdress and tail are made out of fabric printed with dollar bills and green feathers. It was originally owned by a drag queen who performed in anti-casino rallies in Philadelphia and Harrisburg. Needless to say, she hits "Buy It Now!" 

Unfortunately, the little boy's costume is misstaken for a robot, and he gets so tired of trying to explain that he's a slot machine that he gives up and lets people say, "oh, what a cute robot!" as long as he gets candy.  It's okay. Mom knows he's a slot machine, and he knows he's a slot machine. 

This isn't the whole play, it's just part of it. 

I found a spider in the clothes dryer this morning when I was doing laundry. It was a brown spider about the size of a Kennedy half dollar. I thought, how am I going to get this critter out? 

Then I thought, the washer's empty, so you don't have to dry anything for a bit, just do a load of wash and leave the clothes dryer door open, maybe it'll leave on its own. 

So I said to the spider, "When you were young, and your web was somewhere outside,

You used to say, spin and let spin, (you know you did you know you did you know you did)

But when this laundry clothing washer stops a spinnin', if you don't want to fry,

Leave or get dried." 

Thank you. Don't forget to tip your bartenders and waitresses. 

I cannot stop playing this awesome little game.

You ramble around a tiny solar system, exploring and discovering crazy stuff. That's it. It's great. Still in alpha, way more fun than "finished" things I've played with.

After weeks of playing with absolutely no googlin' for spoilerz, I finally broke down and peeked at a playthrough to find out how the heck you land on that wacky disappearing moon. Turns out it's something I never use because the controls are difficult on a mac and I forget how to use stuff that seems less important. So I don't feel so badly about missing it.

Speaking of which, for the benefit of others who were horrified when that other page with the keyboard controls went down:

Outer Wilds Keyboard Controls

move - wasd
look - mouse
interact - e
jump - space
open/close map - m
toggle flashlight - f
toggle telescope - middle click
zoom in - left shift
zoom out - left ctrl

>> Probe Controls <<
launch probe - right click
forward snapshot - right click
reverse snapshot - q
retrieve probe - hold right click

>> Flight Controls <<
thrust horizontally - wasd
thrust up - left shift
thrust down - left ctrl
pitch/yaw - mouse
acquire target - left click
match velocity - space (target required)

>> Ship-Only Flight Controls <<
toggle landing camera - q
engage autopilot - r (target required)

Don't thank me, thank archive.org.