Sorted Update

An update to this… The guy who turned up today came a few hours later than I expected, but got the reconstruction part of the closet-fixing done, and a trapdoor installed, all in two hours flat. The higher-up who was supervising him also showed up, and was very professional. And the killer was, he very conscientiously swept up afterward — not just in my closet, not just the floor beside it, but even out in the hallway where a bunch of sheetrock dust had ended up. I’m hoping that the guy who shows up tomorrow morning for the wallpapering job …

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Shepherds and Sheep

Those of you who knows your Canterbury Tales well don’t need the exact line I’m thinking of in that title, so I won’t give it here, since it would be overstatement. Or, well, no, not really, but it would be not-nice understatement, anyway. I’m struck, in reading the work of schoolteachers who are trying to write an English text for students of the level they teach — and trying is the word, indeed in a couple of senses — that maybe some of the content just shouldn’t be in there. The problem isn’t total incompetence on their part. A lot …

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For the Two People Waiting with Bated Breath…

For those who are interested, the Fictionwise eMagazine edition of the current Asimov’s SF (October/November 2008 double-issue), with my latest fiction publication in it, is available here. I am not so fond of DRM, but Fictionwise does offera PDF option, which is about as non-invasive as you can get. (I’m pretty sure the PDFs are printable, for example.)

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I Need My Own Everything

… because too many people in this world are moron, and those morons seem to be the ones tasked with making sure things don’t fall apart. Yes, my closet is still subject to a huge water leak from the floor above, the Housing Office people remain idiots — and potentially larcenous idiots, given how they went through the apartment above looking for loot to steal (to the point of unwrapping a present left on the counter), the old, junky washing machine ruined a shirt I’d just gotten and had worn twice — because it’s so old and crappy that the …

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