How did humans get out of Africa?

This interactive Web site shows the journey of humanity from its origins in Africa to the rest of the world. Scientists trace humankind through mutations in mitochondrial DNA as populations spread.

Very neat site.

Wow. Just wow.

Obama will have lots of work to do but right now, it just feels good.

The FACT reading group just had their discussion and critique of Gordath Wood and kindly invited me to dinner after they discussed the book. To my relief and delight, they mostly liked it. Yay! There were a few folks for whom the book didn’t work, and their reasons were valid and I am not crushed whatsoever, Kurt. (Just teasing!) I felt like people mostly got what I was going for and even the criticism was well-intentioned, I thought.

It was gratifying to know that the book worked and that it provided a good reading experience. I liked being able to talk about the work of writing and rewriting too. One of the readers had read an early incarnation of the first chapters when I workshopped the manuscript through the Slug Tribe — she liked what I did with it. ; - )

 Dinner was at El Mercado, an Austin Tex-Mex fixture. We had good conversation and decent Tex-Mex (El Mercado is like Tex-Mex comfort food, essentially). I gave a report on World Fantasy Con as well. It was fun to get together with local readers and writers; sort of a continuation of WFC.

Saturday I was at the funeral for a coworker, and I was blindsided by the emotional onslaught. I had worked fairly closely with this woman a few years earlier, but we had both gone onto different positions within the company, and our paths crossed less and less. I knew she was battling cancer; and I thought she had beaten it. Come to find out, so did many of us, because she never let her illness stand in the way of her work.

You know how there are some people who are so professional and good at their job you feel instinctively relieved when you have to work with them? You feel, this person won’t steer me wrong. This person will do a good job, see the bigger picture and at the same time manage the details. Darla Wenzel was that person, and I know that when I think of my day job and when I try to be that person who other people say, “hey, she really knows her stuff,” it is Darla and people like her who I am trying to emulate.

So the funeral was exhausting but uplifting because there were so many friends and family members and coworkers. Then much later I went to David Chang’s birthday party, but by that time, I had been through so many emotions I ended up with a migraine and had to leave early, even though Matt brought an alien in a styrofoam cooler, and there was going to be karaoke later.

I just wanted to say one more thing. Writers, musicians, and artists often think of the day job as a necessary evil. Pay the bills, keep a roof over your head, support your family, all the while writing, performing, creating. Well, when I saw all my coworkers, even people who had moved on to other companies, show up for Darla’s funeral, I knew that we had something special. Maybe the day job is necessary also for a sense of community.

This just in: a new review of Gordath Wood from All About Romance. Here’s an excerpt:

The book truly excels when the focus is on Kate. Kate has led a sheltered life and watching her grow in skill and confidence among the people of the new realm in which she finds herself makes for an interesting story. Though Kate has her adventures in an obviously fantastic world, they somehow feel real and the reader can believe that a New York teenager somehow found her way into a Medieval-level army at war in a wood somehow parallel to the one she knew back home.

I wish I could say that reviews don’t affect me but I would be lying. I love good reviews, I am crushed by bad ones. I also know it would hardly be fair of me to give negative criticism of the books I read and then whine about bad reviews in turn. At least people are reading and talking about Gordath Wood. 

I figure my job is to provide my readers with a good experience and I take that very seriously. So when readers come back with negative criticism I try to look at it objectively despite the sting. And yes, there are some criticisms that are just off the wall — not gonna say which ones! I can’t please everybody and I like to think that I am mature enough not to try.

Well, it’s a goal, anyway.

Psst…Austinites. If you haven’t voted early yet, consider this to be a good time. For people in my ‘hood, the closest early voting spot is the Shriner’s building across from Sun Harvest. They have the little go-karts parked out front and everything.

Fast and easy, there was a crowd but it moved very quickly, and there were plenty of the usual polling crowd to keep things going. These people have been doing it for years, you can tell. They are pros. When I retire, I want to be a poll worker.

 So today is my telecommute day. Ever since K went off to college I’ve been using her bedroom as my telecommute office. It’s the smallest bedroom in the house, but it’s cozy, and now that I cleaned it out, it’s rather nice. There’s a big window up front so I can watch the street as I work. I keep thinking I should move my writing computer into the front bedroom, since my writing office is in the pantry and there are no windows. Would I get less done if I had a window to distract me? Would the trade-off be open air that would invigorate me and make me more productive?

(I don’t know if it’s better to describe it as the pantry or the laundry room because it does serve as both. We have a smaller house than some people have apartments.)

So here’s what I see when I telecommute. The skinny couple with the greyhound. They walk together in the mornings and from my vantage point I can sometimes see only very long legs.

The girl on the low-rider bike who exercises her dog up and down our street. I’d like to do that with my dog, but my dog is an idiot.

Whose house is getting treated for termites.

The neighbor on the corner who takes the bus.

The stupid black cat across the street who vanquished our orange cat so that now Twinkie has to live inside. Stupid black cat. I never wanted a litter box to be part of my life!

The mail carrier. I usually have the window open so we exchange greetings.

Okay, I think I answered my own question. If I had a window to look out of I’d be less productive than I am already. Back into the pantry for me!

Saturday we spent the day on a chartered bus tour of four of the Texas Hill Country’s wineries, and it couldn’t have been a better day for it despite starting off at the ungodly hour of 3:30 am (not the bus tour itself ; I’ll explain that later). Crisp, cool weather, bright sun, and a deep blue sky. We visited Woodrose, Grape Creek, Becker, and Torre di Pietra, in that order. What a way to spend a Saturday, and the day even had a spec fic link at the end — you’ll see.

Woodrose has a beautiful facility with great people. Unfortunately, I didn’t like any of their wines. I was bummed. I really wanted to. However, the guy serving us told us a great story about one of their wines, a rosé that was extremely drinkable. He said that reporters from Food and Wine dubbed it “housewife crack” because of the number of women purchasing it by the case during the reporters’ visit. If you wanted something that was easy to drink and would give you a quick buzz, that would be the wine. I found myself polishing off the smidge I’d been given but I felt cheap even while I was drinking it. ; - )

Grape Creek was next. That was good. I bought a bottle of their syrah and port, both of which were some of the best I’ve ever tasted.

Then came Becker, which is the most touristy of the bunch but with decent wines and a wonderfully informative tour. I was starting to flag, and so I didn’t try all the wines. The group had a picnic there and it was so pretty. It was a perfect Hill Country fall day. They also run a lavender farm and I got a chunk of lavender spearmint soap that smells like heaven.

We finished up at Torre di Pietra, and by then, I couldn’t put anything more alcoholic into my body. It didn’t help that I was sleep-deprived and had given blood the day before, I’m sure. So I and another guy on the tour sort of slid into these chairs on the patio and looked up at the deep blue sky and kind of talked about how it was good we weren’t driving, and how all the wines added up, which ones we thought were the best, and wouldn’t a nap right about now be really nice?

Right about then I noticed a pair of familiar faces. John Gibbons and his wife Cat (Kat?) who are Armadillocon fixtures walked by with their wine, glasses, and snacks to enjoy the music of fiddle and guitar maestro Erik Hokkanen playing at the pavilion. We had a good chat and it was nice to see someone who I usually see only once a year at the best little convention in Texas. So that was the science fiction ending to my day.

The 3:30 am awakening began with a bang, as a drunk driver slammed into our truck, which was parked in front of the house. His Land Rover hit our truck so hard it knocked it across the street almost into our neighbor’s car parked in front of their house. The driver wasn’t injured, but we were out there for about an hour with the cops taking a statement and arresting the driver, and the tow truck etc. Oh yay! Insurance fun! But nobody was hurt and that was something.

I knew I was in trouble when halfway through the recipe I saw the state of my kitchen. Beet juice was splattered everywhere and the sauted apples in their bowl were precariously close to falling off a counter crowded with cutting board, strainers, and food processor attachments.

 No recipe was worth this.

I got the recipe from Sunday’s Parade, and it looked great. Plus, I am a fan of Sheila Lukins — the cookbook she cowrote, The Silver Palate, used to be one of my go-to books. Nowadays I use it for the fabulous Chocolate Hazelnut Cake, but that’s all, because a lot of the recipes are really ornate and we don’t eat or cook like that anymore. I read somewhere that was the ’80s style of cooking, whereas nowadays people are more about simple.

And that should have been my hint. Because Lukins apparently is still of the “the more steps the better” school of cooking, where the processes are many and complex. Her beet soup was not meant for a weeknight.

And the output was just okay. The soup was fine, nothing great. I’ll take some to work for my lunch, and maybe I’ll run to the store and get some crescent dough and make pieroshkies for another dinner.

But seriously, it looked like somebody was murdered in here before I got it all cleaned up.

Oh my, that was amazing. We were looking for a more moderately priced restaurant after the Mrs. B’s night. Stortini’s fit’s the bill. I had scoped the place out for lunch with Sharon and Max — it’s located conveniently close (like blocks away) to Sharon’s work, and since Max joins her at the office, they just strolled on over.

It was great for lunch, and even more fantastic for dinner. The food was wonderful. The only quibble was that Ben had requested the linguine but was served spaghetti instead — hey, it’s a detail they should have gotten right. But we had incredible appetizers (the mussels for Vanita and Byron, the beets for me, and the goat cheese with honey and lemon for Ben — heaven on a plate). 

 I know where Sharon and Max and I will be getting together for lunch next time.

One of the benefits of sending my novel off to my editor is that I have time on my hands, time that I’ve used for watching Nova and reading National Geographic among other less-noble programs (cough! Project Runway cough!). And once again it strikes me how utterly sad creationism and intelligent design are.

I think these people look up at the sky and don’t see the glory of God. Instead they are really afraid of the vastness of the universe. So they make the world — and their God — really really small so as not to scare themselves. Six thousand years?! That’s how old the world is? That’s it?!  Where’s the sense of wonder in six thousand years? I read about or watch documentaries on astronomy, physics, evolution, and it gives me a shiver at how vast and ancient and strange and nonhuman life is, and I want to shake these creationists and say, “Don’t you get it! You’re making God small with your beliefs! You’re making His creation small and puny! Don’t do that!”

So, granted, I have a conflicted belief in God (I think it can be best summed up as, “I don’t believe in God and I argue with Him/Her about it all the time”), but I do know that I am mighty grateful for the mysteries and ancientness of the universe, and the greatest question of all: Are we alone?

I think the creationists hope we are. And I think their dearest goal is to shut down all scientific inquiry because they are afraid of what we’ll find out.

“Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

– Arthur C. Clarke