I remain convinced that Trivial Pursuit can only be played by people who are in it for the laughs. If played at all seriously, it has the potential to rip families apart.

Eventful ride home!

1. Train lost power because of a lose power wire. Sat in snow-crusted train, in the dark, as they worked to “fix the wire.” Then they taped it closed and e kept going.

Fun fact: All the power to the train is controlled by a single wire. Ride safe, Amtrak!

2. Train was dragging live wires all along the sparking rails for X miles before they tripped the safety alarm at a station in Delaware and stopped to fix those wires, too.

3. On the ride back from the station, we got caught up in a high speed cop chase! We were at a stop lightand heard the squeal of tires – a car was doing 360s towards us. It hit the median and slowed down enough that the car barely tapped us, as a cop car with lights on cut across two lanes to block the car.

We tried to get ahead of what we thought was the end of a chase, only to see a moment later that the car was passing us, the trunk ripped off the back and dragging as he sped past as going about 80, 90? The cop couldn’t keep up, and neither could the other four cop cars that sped up behind us. A few streets later we saw the collection of blue-light cop cars (nine) that had finally pulled the car over. The news has yet to mention this, which sort of surprises me.

I have been eating cookies since the moment of arrival, though, which does wonders for the nerves.

I like how I don’t even remember what happened on Monday or Tuesday. Sleep deprivaiton FTW!

Wednesday: KGB! It was a great reading, with Alaya Dawn Johnson and Christopher Barzak. I think. Turns out I couldn’t hear anything due to the play some dudes were rehearsing upstairs. It went, no joke, like this:

“HI EVERYONE! IT’S TIMMY, HOME FROM SCHOOL!”
*SOMETHING ELSE AT IMPOSSIBLE YET MUMBLY VOLUME*
“WOULD YOU LIKE TO INVITE SOME FRIENDS ALONG?”
“BOY, WOULD I?!”

Repeat that every two minutes for an hour and a half. Enjoy! I know I did.

Thursday: Went uptown to see Ellen Kushner’s The Klezmer Nutcracker. The costumes made me angry to the point of distraction, but some of the staging is really enjoyable, sly jokes are thrown in for the grown-ups, and even as a child-hater, it is adorable to watch kids just go NUTS for everything, especially the chance to answer riddles. (Thankfully by raising their hands, not by raising their little-monster voices. Yay politeness!)

Friday: Six inches of snow and sleet! My commute home from work will be awesome.

Saturday: A train ride! Formerly a bus ride, but I have images of a beautiful ice ballet of cars twirling slowly across the highway tomorrow.

I blogged at Tor.com about the Antikythera mechanism, recently replicated by a museum curator and part-time awesome-ist. It reminds me a lot of my first laptop, only this two thousand year old computer works faster than my first laptop, which was only good for predicting orbit as far as I could throw it.

I am leaving on vacation this weekend, and will be at home all week, working on the book edits and the 2k-a-day writing schedule I have to be on for the rest of the year to meet my goals. I was planning to bring the large laptop, but my dad called me last night to make sure I was bringing Fassbender, my Acer Aspire One, home for the holidays. He was as excited about the computer as he was about my visit. (Possibly more excited about the computer than my visit. I mean, I’ve already visited him before; the computer is new!)

I’m debating – I love it for short bursts, but am I going to get Carpal Tunnel banging out 2k a day on its teeny keyboard? On the other other hand, when friends at home ask, “What are you doing these days?” I can just hold it up, since I spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer for something or other, and it’s cute enough to distract them from my boring night life!

I must say that I am disappointed in the selection available online. The velvet shirts? Only available through the catalog, apparently. The frightening array of leather pants? Here reduced to only two. It’s a shame, really, but I’ve made do.

Behold, the International Male!

Because nothing says style like a plastic jacket and a half-finished perm.

It only gets better. Or worse.
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