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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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Congratulations on winning an honorable mention for Best Blog at the 2018 Quill Awards for [Link To Item #1196512] . *^*Smile*^* This award was sponsored by the blogging consortium including [Link To Item #30dbc] , [Link To Item #blogcity] , [Link To Item #bcof] and [Link To Item #1953629] . For more details, see [Link To Item #quills] .](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Blogging-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Highly Recommended
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   PROMPT January 11th Write about a recent movie, documentary, or TV show you watched that you did not expect to enjoy, but actually did. Give your readers some recommendations! Here's the thing, though: I really can't do that. That is, as much of a pessimist as I am, these days, I only get into shows / movies that I expect to enjoy. Since I'm single and there's a pandemic going on, I'm not subjected to people pestering me to watch something I wouldn't otherwise. On the occasions when that's happened, back when I still had friends, it usually lives down to my low expectations. Now, there have been countless times when the opposite occurred: when I expected to like a piece of entertainment, but ended up disappointed. The last Star Wars movie, for instance. Around the same time that came out, however, there was a movie I expected to utterly detest, but ended up liking. It was over a year ago, though, so it doesn't count as "recent." This was a movie that pretty much everyone in the universe, and beyond, hated... except for me. To hear the internet talk about it, you'd think it was a massive black hole of suck and was responsible for earthquakes, tidal waves, tornadoes, and the pandemic. (I'm sure the fact that it came out about when the pandemic started was purely a coincidence. Well, mostly sure, anyway. Pretty sure.) I fully expected to hate it, based on the trailers and early reviews; I mostly just went to see it as a joke, but it turned out to be a really enjoyable movie. I'm talking about Cats. Look, I eschewed bandwagoning years and years ago. I'm not going to pretend to dislike something just because the internet says it sucks; conversely, I'm not going to pretend to like something just because it's popular. And I'm not saying the movie was a masterpiece or anything, but it was way more enjoyable than I expected. You know, after The Empire Strikes Back came out, lo these many years ago, I was in my teens. And I remember hearing from someone at my school that they planned to make it a trilogy, and then do a prequel trilogy, followed by an ending trilogy. I also remember thinking, back then, "Damn, I gotta stay alive to see the end of this trilogy of trilogies, because Star Wars is fucking awesome." And I know I posted this here before, on my newsfeed, right after Cats and The Rise of Skywalker came out, but again -- it's been over a year. So I'll paraphrase it here as best as I can remember it: I went to see TRoS and Cats on the same weekend. Afterward, I hopped into my time machine to have a chat with Kid Me, shortly after he saw Empire. "Greetings! I am Future You." "Oh yeah? What's with the beard?" "Shut up. I'm here to reassure you that you will, indeed, live long enough to see the end of the Skywalker saga." "Awesome!" "That same weekend, you will see the film version of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical." "Eww! Grody to the max! Gag me with a spoon!" "Sigh. Stupid eighties. Anyway... you're going to hate the Star Wars movie and love the musical." "...what? Bullshit." "Would I lie to you?" "NOOOOOOOOOOO! No, it can't be!" "Search your feelings. You know it to be true." Point is, if I couldn't convince Kid Me of this, there's no way I could convince anyone else. Still. I'd totally see Cats again. |
| PROMPT January 10th If you could have free, unlimited service for 5 years from an extremely good cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, masseuse, or personal secretary, which would you choose, and why? Or I could get married again and have all of the above! Oh, wait, you said "free." Seriously, though, chauffeur. The reason is simple: I still want to visit every brewery in the US. Or at least whichever ones are left when the virus dust settles. Doing so requires driving. Driving is not something I want to do after visiting a brewery. Hence the need for a driver. Honestly, it wouldn't have to be free, though. I'd pay someone to do that. But free would be nice. I realize this is probably an unattainable goal. Not only are there thousands of craft breweries, but in the Before Time, every week or so on average, one would disappear and three more would pop up to take its place. With a net gain of ~600 breweries a year, and starting with about 8000 or so of them, that's a lot of ground to cover. Honestly, it's probably less than that at this point; a lot of them will not have been able to make it through the closings and restrictions on group gatherings. Still, it's a lot. But hey, what's life without goals, right? If I ever did manage to finish, I'd be like Alexander the Great: looking around going, "Okay, now what?" Well, there's always Canada. And England, and Belgium, and Germany... So by my math, to cover them all in five years, I'd have to visit six breweries a day on average. Definitely not something I can do on my own. And no, I'm not saying I have to try all of their wares, just a small sampling of their various products, but still, driving during such an adventure is contraindicated by both law and common sense. And here in reality, I don't want to be away from home for more than a month or so at a stretch. Cats, you know. So I don't know if I'll ever achieve the goal. But I can dream. |
| PROMPT January 9th Write about some important life skills that are rarely taught but extremely useful? Oh man. This prompt almost makes me wish I hadn't drank beer followed by tequila earlier, leading me to pass out only to wake up due to the alarm I set for myself at midnight to remind me to post a blog entry. Almost. I mean, come ON, there is no other rational response to everything that's going on right now. Consequently, despite having been asleep for hours whilst dreaming of living in a sane universe, I am still drunk. Which brings me to my first Important Life Skill That Is Rarely Taught But Extremely Useful: Coping. Instead of actually teaching this, we throw kids of various socioeconomic backgrounds together in a blender and hope that things work out between them. This allows them to quickly figure out whether they're considered worth defending or not. Unless they play sportsball, the answer is "not." And this is somewhat related to the second Important Life Skill That Is Rarely Taught But Extremely Useful: Critical Thinking. One does not have to be an Advanced Supergenius like me, or even have moderate intelligence, to learn how to think critically and discern truth from propaganda. On the other hand, even the most otherwise intelligent people will fail at this unless they are taught how to spot bullshit. I don't want people being told what to think. But teaching people how to think needs to be an integral part of education. This is probably unrelated to a final Important Life Skill That Is Rarely Taught But Extremely Useful: Finance. People generally have a bad relationship with money. Sure, money is an abstraction, but it's a important abstraction for dealing with life's vicissitudes. Some basics of personal finance are better being taught early, and one cannot trust parents, who have not learned such skills, to convey them to their children. I had to pick these things up from Life, but some people never seem to learn. There are probably other things, but... again... tequila. Which may not be the best way to cope, but I never claimed to be an expert in any of the above areas. |
| PROMPT January 8th Are you a procrastinator? What do you do when you are procrastinating doing something else? If you’re not prone to procrastination, how do you stay motivated? As I've noted before -- fairly recently, if I recall correctly -- I put the "pro" in procrastination. I figure if something's worth doing, it's worth doing at the very last minute. And why do anything today that you can put off until tomorrow -- or later? Lately, though, I find myself procrastinating less than in earlier times. This is because of age, I suppose, and perhaps a greater unwillingness to deal with the consequences of potentially being late. There are still upsides to procrastination. For example, the only time I ever get any housework done is when I decide that the annoyance of doing housework is less than the annoyance of doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing. Yes, that's one of the things I do when I'm avoiding other tasks. If the task I'm trying to accomplish is housework, though, I somehow find the time to organize my emails or something. And there are, in fact, some things I never put off until the last minute. If I'm down to one beer in the fridge, for instance, then I've waited too long to buy more beer. This never happens. On a more serious note, I haven't been late paying a bill in many years, even the ones I can't put on autopay. There's still a part of me that wants to wait, though. If I had a session with a shrink (which I totally should but I've been putting off finding one), I'd probably assert that it's because I want to give myself time to thoroughly consider something before doing it. I do that with writing, too; I won't start a story until I've thought about it long enough to know what I want the beginning and end to be like. This is a reason why my output is so sporadic. Likely there's something deeper at play which, ideally, the shrink would fish out. But maybe I don't want to know, hence my procrastination in making appointments. I could probably find more to add, here, but perhaps that can wait until tomorrow. |
| PROMPT January 7th What movie universe would be the best to live out the rest of your life in? Oooh, good question. Haven't really thought about it. For me, fiction is fun but I don't imagine myself living there. So let's think about some of the more popular cinematic universes. Some of these might not meet the strict definition. I don't care. I figure if there's more than one movie (and/or TV show) that have continuity with each other, they count. Marvel. This is the obvious choice, really, but it has major downsides, including the ever-present threat of godlike beings messing around with Earth. One could argue that this is what the heroes are for, but on the other hand, I'd hate to be between, say, Hulk and whatever Hulk wants to smash. So... pass. Star Wars. Upside: Space travel, cool outfits. Downside: Ewoks, Sith, Space Fascists, and whateverthefuck JarJar was. Pass. James Bond. Fun if you're an elegant, martini-swilling spy with cool gadgets. Not so much fun if said spy ever fails and some villain takes over the world. So, nope. Harry Potter. You know, if you think about it, this might be the most ill-conceived universe after Twilight (which is itself a hard pass). So much of the "wizards are operating in secret" thing doesn't make logical sense unless you figure they're Jedi-mind-tricking everyone on a regular basis, and I don't want my mind messed with like that. DC Extended Universe. Same problem as their traditional rival, Marvel, see above, with the added downside of really spotty writing. No. The Matrix. Hell no. We have enough problems in our own world with people thinking we're living in a simulation. John Wick. No. Hey, don't get me wrong; I love those movies but I wouldn't want to live in one. Doctor Who. Only if I get to be a companion. All of time and space. Star Trek. This one may be a bit of a cheat, since it's meant to be not an alternate universe but a future-us. And it started out as TV only, but more than enough movies have been made for it to count as a cinematic universe. And the upsides are plentiful: a post-scarcity society with warp drive, transporters, advanced medical science, and a unified humanity. So this is a real contender, for me. On the downside, though, you also have powerful aliens deciding to mess up Earth's day on a regular basis, just like in the MCU. I wouldn't mind living in the Trek universe. Preferably the original timeline, not the Kelvin one. Also, coincidentally, on my current run-through of all the Star Trek episodes / films in chronological order of release, I'm approaching the end of Season 5 of TNG. One of the greatest Trek episodes -- hell, one of the greatest TV episodes -- of all time, in my opinion at least, was The Inner Light. In it, Picard, because of some alien technology, appears to experience the rest of his life on a different world (while he's passed out on the Bridge -- it makes sense in the context of the episode). I just had to mention this here because I was watching it when this prompt came up, and Picard actually got to do what we're talking about, albeit not of his own volition. But I think the winner, for me, is the cinematic universe created by Kevin Smith: The View Askewniverse. It's a lot like our own universe, but with a lot more comedy and nerdy reference jokes. Nootch. |
| PROMPT January 6th Do you support any charitable organizations or causes through donations or volunteering? If so, what causes do you support? And if not, what would you support if you had the ability? No. Not going to reveal that here. Not today. I will, instead, list several things I will never willingly support under any circumstances. The Salvation Army. Not only are they anti-freedom, but their people ring bells outside of grocery stores, and I want them to go away. Any organization with the word "family" in their name. Without exception, these groups are Puritanical. Religious causes. Although if a religious organization is doing actual helping work, I'd consider it. Anyone with an overhead >10%. Though this rule is squishy, I want to make sure my donation is going to the cause, not the ad budget or organizer's private jet. Any "children" charity. By which I mean any group where, when I'm buying something, the cashier asks me something like "Would you like to donate a dollar to X?" X in this case almost invariably has the word "children" in it, and all other such causes are tarnished by association. This may not be fair, but so be it. I will not put up with attempts to guilt me into giving spare change. Spammers. Let's say I gave you $50 in 2001 because I thought your cause was justified. Over the course of the last 20 years, I have received 240 letters, 1,040 emails, and numerous phone calls / texts from you. The total cost of delivering said barrage of beg has far exceeded the $50 I gave you then, so you're not getting so much as a penny from me ever again. Solicitors. Show up at my door? Fuck off forever. Anyone that uses a baby animal (including human) image in their solicitation. Your emotional blackmail will not work on me and will, in fact, have the opposite effect. All this, as you might imagine, leaves me with only a few options, but I am still reluctant to discuss them. I generally prefer to keep this sort of thing to myself, though get me drunk enough and I'll probably confess. I'm not drunk enough now (though it's not for lack of trying). It's just not anyone else's business. I know that's an odd thing to say after I've shared so many other things in here... but that's just the way it is. |
| PROMPT January 5th If you could learn the answer to one question about your future, what would the question be? Hey, why limit it to one question? You can ask all the questions you want and get a true, accurate prediction right here: Ask The Magic 8-Ball!  Just think of a question that can be answered "Yes" or "No", concentrate very, very hard, and click on the "Ask" button. Hey, Magic 8-Ball, will I ever get married again? Cannot predict now Whoa, that's a tough one, huh? At least I can choose to avoid doing so. How about something easier? Magic 8-Ball, will I become owned by another cat this year? My sources say no Well, that's kind of a relief. Between my two and my housemate's other two cats, we have reached the limit of catitude just below that of Crazy Cat People (the formula is C=N+2, where N is the number of humans in the house and C is the maximum number of cats before you are a CCP). Anyway, now we're getting somewhere. So, Magic 8-Ball, will the guy who's supposed to rebuild my deck this fall do a good job? As I see it yes Definitely a relief, and this also tells me that he'll actually do it and not make up some excuse to put it off until 2022! Now, Magic 8-Ball, will I manage to end this year sipping cocktails on a tropical island, being fanned by beautiful bikini-clad women while reading good books? Cannot predict now Dammit! We're back to that again. I'll just have to find a way to make that happen on my own. ...I actually had one of those things when I was a kid. Yes, they've been around that long. I guess some relative or other presented it to me as a birthday or Hanukkah gift. I messed with it a little bit, but it didn't take me long to figure out how it worked: 20-sided die (okay, this was before D&D but I already knew about platonic solids) suspended in a semi-opaque liquid inside the black ball. Pretty neat, incredibly simple toy and very clever. It does not, however, predict the future. Of course. Sometimes, amusingly, I could get the icosahedron to balance on an edge at the window, rather than a face, thus representing the true uncertainty of any predictions about the future. There are some things about the future that can be predicted to incredible accuracy, like the next few thousand years' worth of solar eclipses as seen from Earth. Orbital dynamics is well-understood and predictable to a great degree of precision -- and yet, all these predictions assume that nothing happens like a black hole swooping through the neighborhood, or space aliens coming by to mess with the planetary orbits. (Why would they do that? Who knows? I can't tell you how humans think, let alone space aliens.)On the other hand, we can't predict the weather to any degree of accuracy out past a week or so, and the further you go the less accurate the weather report is. The systems involved are simply too complex. Hell, last time they predicted "snow tomorrow," we got a few millimeters of ice and that's about it. Kid Me with his Magic 8-Ball wanted to believe. He really wanted to know what the future actually held, but something in him even then realized that a dollar's worth of plastic and glass wasn't going to cut it. Now, though? My actual answer to the prompt above is "No, I don't think so. Nothing." It's like, when I had a lot of future I wanted to know what would happen, but now that there's not a lot of future left for me, I think I'd rather be surprised. Especially since the alternative would be, as Kid Me eventually discovered, profound disappointment. |
| PROMPT January 4th Start your entry with this statement: “I am frustrated about ________ because ________.” I am frustrated about health insurance because I don't know if I have it or not. I think I wrote about some of this last month, but the quick recap is this: I have been getting mixed messages from my health insurance company about whether the new policy, which should have started January 1, is in force or not. They sent me a card, and the website says I'm insured, but they also kept sending me notices that I had to choose a plan (after I chose a plan), and the automatic payment which always posts on the first day of every month has not shown up on my bank's online records yet. Welcome to America. And naturally, I haven't been able to contact them because Friday was a holiday and they don't take calls on weekends. Later today, I have a routine doctor appointment -- one to which I do not wish to go if I don't have a plan in place, for reasons that Americans might understand but would be incomprehensible to folks from civilized countries. And if it turns out that by not having paid them on the first, they've canceled any plan I might have in place, I'll probably end up without health insurance for the rest of the year. During a global pandemic. Now... probably... everything will be fine and they'll suck up my money later today and I'll be insured this year. I just wish they could have been more clear last month, when it was possible for me to do something else about it. I called them twice toward the end of the year, and both times they're like "everything's fine, you'll be insured, the premiums will get charged automatically on the first of the month." Well, since that didn't happen, it's... like I said... frustrating. It also makes me wonder what else they're being unclear about. "Oh, we don't cover anything that actually happens to you. Money flows from you to us, you know, not from us to the doctors." I'm not trying to get political here, and I don't mind paying a reasonable amount for medical services. It's just that my definition of "reasonable amount" isn't $12,000 for a band-aid and a dab of Neosporin. I live two miles away from one of the best hospitals in the country, but what good does that do when I can't afford their services? It's difficult for me to believe that I'm the only person in such a situation, either. While we're on the subject of frustrations, though, have you ever put on an article of clothing only for something on it to poke you? Like, just some kind of small, hard fiber that irritates your skin. And then when you go looking for whatever it is, you can't find it? So you rearrange your clothes, but pretty soon they fall back into place and the thing is scratching at your skin again? Well, that's been happening to me all weekend and it's making me meshuggah. Still, that's pretty minor compared to the health insurance thing. But it's not helping my mood, either. |
| PROMPT January 3rd If you had a portal that would instantly transport you to one specific place on Earth whenever you wanted, where would you want to go? You can use the portal as often as you want, but it will only transport you to the one location you choose and then back again to where you came from. Oh, this one's easy: Belize. Look, it's really very simple: I despise cold weather, but I like Virginia. Unfortunately, Virginia is cold for 3-4 months out of the year, and kinda iffy for another 1-2 months. On the other hand, Belize is in Central America and in the potential path of hurricanes... but generally, only in the months where it's not cold in Virginia. I could also say "Hawai'i," but having been to Hawai'i, it's expensive as hell unless you can get kama'aina, but only residents get that and with the portal I still wouldn't be a resident. But really, any place that is warm when it's cold here will do. Oz, maybe, though I'm not a huge fan of 40C weather either, or having 90% of the flora and fauna actively trying to kill me. Or New Zealand, which I've never been to either but has the benefit of it being summer there when it's winter here, and also doesn't have drop bears. Obviously, just about anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere or tropics would meet my requirements, but Belize was the first thing to come into my head and now I'm not sure I can even justify it. I mean, it's got its problems, but I did enjoy my visit there lo these many years ago and would like to go back, portal or no. In the hypothetical situation we're discussing, though, I'd want the portal to take me someplace I'm familiar with already, and when it comes to the tropics, for me that's limited to Hawai'i, Belize, Antigua, Montserrat, and St. Thomas. Of all of those, only Belize is not a tiny island. And I've never been south of the Equator, a situation I would like to remedy before I kick it. Now. I'm just drunk enough to point out a potential issue with such a portal. Okay, more than one issue. Let's start with air pressure. The average air pressure at the surface of the Earth is, by definition, one atmosphere. There are myriad and confusing ways to report said pressure, in both imperial and metric units, but let's go with the metric standard of 101,325 Pa. That is, as I mentioned, an average. An arithmetic mean. It varies according to weather conditions and elevation and, notably, when it's warm the pressure tends to be significantly lower than when it's cold. As this portal specifically exists to take me from someplace cold (defined by me as anything less than about 12C) to someplace warm (defined by me as anything above around 20C), and I currently live at 500' above mean sea level, I don't know how such a hypothetical portal could handle pressure differentials. Air pressure gradients in adjacent areas of Earth's surface can generate hurricane-force winds. Hell... that's usually what wind is: an attempt to balance out pressure differences. Change that to non-adjacent areas connected by a magical or scientific portal, and the problem gets even worse. That's always bugged me in science fiction, by the way. Bad enough when it's a portal from one place on Earth to another, but when it's between worlds, like the Stargate or something, how do you justify being able to send people through the portal when there's almost certainly an air pressure differential on both sides? How does it send people but not air molecules? I'm sure a clever writer can hand-wave the science, but most fiction never even tries. And then there's angular momentum. You may feel like you're standing still, but you are not. If you're on the equator, you're moving at 460 meters per second with the Earth's rotation, relative to the planet's axis. You're also being flung around the sun and the solar system itself is moving through the galaxy, but let's just think about rotational velocity right now. I live at about 38 degrees north latitude, which (math) is moving at about 355 meters per second relative to the axis. Those numbers are probably outside most peoples' experience, so for the benefit of other Americans: 1000 mph and 800 mph. That might sound "close enough" but imagine jumping off a train moving at 1000-800=200 mph and that's the kind of velocity change that a portal from my house to somewhere on the Equator would have to deal with. It would be even worse, obviously, the further from the Equator you go. And, finally, such a portal would need to take into account that the planet is round (yes, really, it is, and if you believe otherwise, boy are you in the wrong place right now), so how do you change a person's angle as you change their latitude? If that makes sense. I might still be drunk from Zoomies, so I'm probably not explaining everything as clearly as I could. None of which, of course, even begins to answer the question of how such a portal could be built in the first place, but hey, let's not get too technical here. |
| PROMPT January 2nd 2020 is finally in the rear view mirror... what’s ahead for you in 2021? Happy birthday, Emily  Being my usual sunny, optimistic self ("sunny" as in "can cause heatstroke, burns, and blindness" and "optimistic" as in "sarcastic"), I've been saying things like "2020 was only the preface" and "flipping a calendar changes nothing but the calendar." One thing I hope I will not do: repeat my 2020 "blogging every day" achievement. Because if I do that, it would mean I will have been stuck at home all year again, rather than traveling like I want to. Not that I can't blog when I travel, usually; it's just that I'm not going to make myself take the time to do an entry every day. I know some people are traveling anyway. With proper precautions and care, it's not in itself hazardous. It's just that, for me, the whole purpose of traveling is to visit breweries and restaurants, and it's a crapshoot as to whether those are open in a particular area or not. Not to mention the mask-averse plague rats that infest nearly every location. Also, the main trip I want to take is to Europe, and last I heard there were still travel restrictions there. Other than that, obviously, I don't know. If 2020 taught me anything, it's that people will believe stupid shit... and that predicting what will happen is useless when external events can fuck everything up. On last year's New Year's Day entry, I wrote: "I have some plans, but life has a way of interfering with them." Prescience? Nah, pessimism. I also wrote in one of its comments: "Seeing the country before it plunges into apocalypse..." with regards to a reason why I traveled a lot in the teens. So really, 2020 didn't change my attitude much. A few things, besides travel, that I would like to do this year: see movies in the theater, drink, do the biweekly Zoom meetings for WDC folks (see yesterday's entry), listen to music, play computer games, blog, learn more French and maybe Dutch, continue doing Comedy and Fantasy newsletters monthly, and attempt to be funny. But like I said. No guarantees, except that there are no guarantees. Paradox! |
| PROMPT January 1st What’s something GOOD that happened in 2020? I have a confession to make: 2020 wasn't a terrible year for me. Oh, sure, I was visited by the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. His name is Minor Inconvenience. Death, Pestilence, War, and Famine don't talk about him much. I'm not trying to downplay how horrible the year was for a lot of people. I'm not as self-centered as I sometimes project myself to be. Hence why I call this a "confession." I know it was a really rough year for a lot of folks, and I still don't see it getting any better just because a clock struck midnight. Ideally, I should go on being empathetic toward the plight of others, but right now, with this prompt, I'm just going to take a moment to gloat about how I, personally, was largely untouched by the tides of 2020. I didn't get sick; no one I'm close to died; and life continued to be, as I noted in yesterday's entry, unfair in my favor. Sure, there were things I wanted to do that I couldn't, such as travel, theater movies, and drinking at bars. As I said: minor inconvenience. And there were a few moments of deep despair, but they were mostly fixed with music and alcohol, the combination of which often cures what ails me. There is, of course, no guarantee that this will continue. As I also noted in yesterday's entry, luck can be fickle, and fortunes can reverse at any time. But as far as the big bad wolf of 2020 goes, he didn't manage to huff and puff and blow my house down. One good thing about 2020? I survived it, and even prospered in spite of it.  I appreciated all of the comments from yesterday. Some of them made me feel really good indeed. I'm so glad that people get something from what I write in here, sometimes. Another confession: here it is, 12 hours into the new year, and I find myself still drunk from last night. So I don't trust myself to pick Merit Badge recipients at random right at the moment. Perhaps after some more Advil and a nice nap, I'll be able to roll the virtual dice. Bad enough I have to judge and prompt at "The Writer's Cramp" [13+] as soon as I'm done posting this.One thing I'll continue into 2021: mini-contests. So everyone will have another chance soon. Another thing I'll continue: Zoomies. Our next meeting is tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure I'll be sober for the start of that. Probably not the end of it, though. If you haven't chimed in, maybe it's something you'd like to do this year, just to hang out and chat about writing and life in general. You can find more information here:
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