of no importance and in no particular order:

1) I’ve become an ant carrier. The Dome has been attracting trails upon trails of ants during the summer (sigh), so I’ve become careful to avoid starting parades in my room by hiding away food and to always check for passengers before I leave the house. Yet there’s always one brave little scout that ends up wandering onto the top of my desk at work or crossing the expanse of my dashboard while I drive down highway 101. It’s like a new ant every day coming out from who knows where. If I were more generous, I would try to drop the buggers off on a potted plant or some nice outdoor terrain in dutiful pro-immigration fashion. Or better, I would carry them along with me all day, then finally return them back home to their colony so they could rush over to their ant pals and go “Oh shit, guys! You’ll never believe what I’ve seen!” and continue to relay their survivor experience. That might actually make me feel like a nice big person, at least until they started taking over my leftovers again when I wasn’t looking.

2) It never ceases to shock me how quickly strawberries develop the white fuzz. After only a brief sit on my office desk inside of its plastic container, I already notice the beginnings of a two o’clock shadow and the smell of inedible berry that goes along with it. Yuck. “You age like a strawberry” will become my new insult.

3) I passed the one year anniversary of my return to California last month, once again becoming a Californian for all intents and legal purposes. Woo! Of course, my first instinct after all that achievement was to high tail it to somewhere else so that I could once again become an expatriated Californian because, honestly, it feels more fun to be an outsider. I will never grow out of this phase.

4) I was watching a SyFy channel show with an episode about building futuristic robots, and one thing that Michio Kaku considered essential to program into a smart, human-like robot was “common sense”. It sounded a bit funny to me since it didn’t seem like that trait even came standard with all human brains, but I could be wrong.

5) At long last, after years of being just a geek in the crowd, I’ve scored a spot at SF’s APE. I’m a geek at a table! Printed materials of mine in the hands of strangers who won’t actually buy them! I’m nervous and excited and have less than 6 weeks to prepare.

OK, that last one is at least important to me. Wish me luck.