I finished up my Zeppelin story, printed it out, and got it ready to go be submitted. My first submission of fiction! I used one of Phil's old manuscripts as the template for the formatting. I spent half the time trying to think up a good title. I hate writing titles. Near the end, one character says, "The third time's the charm", so I used that. It seemed as good as any.
I don't have any illusions about the writing: it's not as polished as it needs to be and I could see that there were still structural problems with the story that I couldn't really fix. I tried a couple of times and liked the alternatives less than the original. So, I mostly left it alone. I just read it one more time, printed it out, and sent it off.
A faculty member in my department was chatting with me yesterday, describing how she and a friend are planning to get flying squirrels as pets. A colleague had recently caught a flying squirrel in his house and, when he said he was planning to put it outside in the cold weather, she asked him to give it to her. "It was really cute," she said. In doing some research, she found that if you get a baby flying squirrel (there are breeders that sell them) and carry it around with you in a little pouch, it reportedly "bonds" with you, and becomes an extremely tame and enjoyable pet. She and her friend just ordered some babies from a breeder and were apparently going to be getting them soon. I told this story to my boys last night and they are now convinced that they must get flying squirrels. Daniel's first words this morning were, "Have you figured out how we're going to get a flying squirrel yet?" I think Alisa is ready to strangle me.
I was disgusted to watch the news coverage today about the Democratic race. The pudits have all but decided that Howard Dean's campaign is over. What's interesting to me is the extent to which early events, which are all driven by people seeking out information (primarily using the web) have favored Dean, but now that the voting is happening (where the traditional media plays a much larger role), Dean has less of an advantage. But I still think that the early organization and money may yet pay off. And it's fun to see people turning lemons into lemonade by 
remixing Howard's speech. I need to get a copy of Soundtrack or Garageband -- it looks like a lot of fun.