Just a quick update today because the power is off and on. I managed to steal some time this week to reply to Astropoetica submissions, but there is still a sizable backlog. I am hoping to clear the rest by the end of this month, weather permitting.

That’s a big question, though. Tropical Storm Fay has already given us a few frights, and we’re not quite done with it yet. An oak fell next to my house last night, taking down gutters flashing and some of the roof with it. Fortunately, the damage appears to be largely superficial as nothing appears to be leaking yet. I’d knock on wood, but I’m too afraid of knocking another tree over.

So far we just have the usual lake forming in our backyard — no serious flooding here, though the earth worms did try to get in when I opened the sliding glass door this morning. The last I heard my neighborhood’s exit was blocked by a fallen tree, so I don’t expect to be going anywhere soon. Not that I wanted to be on the roads in this weather anyway.

On a positive note, the stargazer lily we brought indoors yesterday bloomed this morning. If we had left it outside, it would have been crushed by the tree you see in the background of this picture.

Yes, I still exist, and I’m putting some order to my chaos. Some of you know a good bit of what’s been going on, and those who don’t have been so graciously patient that I consider myself most fortunate to know you.

Last fall was a bit overwhelming — new job, graduation, and the passing of an old friend. This year I’ve gotten married, and we’re expecting our first child in October. That cold I had in January transitioned into the joys of morning-noon-night sickness and exhaustion, and it was all I could do to get through my day job. Many things fell to the wayside — Astropoetica sadly among them.

Now that I have finally wrapped up my responsibilities in the Digital Media Center, I have more time to catch up with my other passions. It helps that I’m not feeling quite as badly as I did during my first trimester, though it would appear that I’m one of those lucky women who gets to enjoy her morning sickness throughout her pregnancy. Hooray.

So! Astropoetica! I’ve finished the mock-ups for the Spring/Summer issue, and proofs will be going out this afternoon. This issue will be a bit larger than the usual, but I still have a good bit in inventory that will have to wait until the Fall issue. If you’ve had work accepted and don’t hear from me today, then rest assured that your work will be appearing in the Fall issue. (I completely understand if you’re a little anxious about this — feel free to drop me a line.)

I have a great deal of unanswered mail. I’ve killed about two thousand spam messages so far, and what’s left looks doable in the next week. Once I finish with the mail, I will be putting together the Fall issue. I want it done ahead of time in case my little one decides to show up early.

As for the future of Astropoetica, I will not be reopening to submissions this year. I may reopen early next year, but I’m afraid I cannot (and should not) make any promises. It would be so much easier to let this project go if I didn’t have the opportunity to work with such exceptional poets. Every time I dive into a new issue, I am reminded why I started. Given a quick peek at the slush pile, I’m pretty confident I have enough gems to put together a beautiful Winter issue. I may have to leave it up to kisbaba, but given how active it’s been while I’ve been working on the current issue, I cannot imagine it objecting.

After all, this one flew in on a comet. Astropoetry’s in the blood.

I’ve been informed that two months of bupkis does not a blog make. Rather than compel my (none too) gentle readers to apply for NSA grants to build a fleet of creeping spy-bots to gather my vital stats, I will say simply that I have been very busy wrapping up one semester and starting another. I have also taken a new job with FSU’s Digital Media Center, and I have been devoting a lot of time to training.

Alas, all this has pushed my correspondence back a bit. My Mystery Summer Project has become my Mystery Summer/Fall/Hopefully-Not-Winter Project. The jungle that is my yard is attempting to devour my house. My neglected loved ones have taken to leaving desperate “I am not Stephen Colbert”-laced search strings in my logs. I’m abusing caffeine.

My priority for the weekend week will be to bring Astropoetica up to date. I’m working through the last of my submissions backlog, and I’ll try to finish up the proofs for the next issue. Cosmopoetic goodness is on the way – I promise!

Judging from all the furor over Philip Sandifer’s “I am Ready to Serve my Country” flash piece, I have to wonder how the University of Florida’s police department would do with the reading comprehension portions of the FCAT.

I suspect not well.

Requesting a DNA sample over a work of fiction is scandalous enough. If, as Sandifer suggests, the driving force behind this is pressure from the university president’s office, then it’s an institutional disgrace. So much for academic freedom.

Writers beware. Klingon translators and Jeopardy champions, head for the hills.

Yes, the hair is gone, happily sent off to Locks of Love.

If you find your own hair getting rather longish and you’re contemplating lopping it off, you might consider donating it. Locks of Love is a non-profit organization that “provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children 18 years and younger suffering from long-term medical hair loss.”

They accept lengths of ten inches and longer.

I made a valiant effort to find Sanctuary but was taken down by a Sandman (my nephew Logan, no less) on my birthday. What you read now is just the ghost in the machine.

Had I survived the journey, there may have been a different result for Emily’s Burn Level Challenge. As it is, I am somewhat surprised to announce that I was not hideously disfigured by UV rays nor, as Ãron darkly insinuated, did I burst into flames upon arrival at the beach. In fact, I remained relatively unaltered until my final day on St. George, when I entertained the reckless notion of going out after 6:30pm without a reapplication of 60 SPF sunscreen. (Other phantoms, be forewarned.)

Let’s see. I’d say I’d have to score a 3 for select bits of my scalp, 1.8 for my shoulders and chest, 1.6 for my face, and 1.3 for consequential pinkness in generally exposed areas. I am not at all sure what to do about my forearms, which appear to have jumped the scale entirely for, and I am not making this up, actual brownness. I’m shocked. My freckles are shocked. Should I eliminate my arms from the calculation? Hmm. Would I balance out the omission if I also exempted my concealed torso from the final averages?

If so, that gives us about 1.37. A very slight edge for Ãron (1.7) over Melissa and Matt (1.0), who had more faith in the power of sunscreen.

However, I should probably point out that the critical 6:30 outing was Ãron’s idea. In general, I had better sun safety sense:

I’m off to St. George for the week. Since we all know I do not tan, I’m taking wagers on the shade I’ll be when I get back. Use the following scale as a reference:

In the interests of fairness, I will say that I am currently sporting a 0.5, with nose approaching 0.8.

Ãron and I took a nice hike through the Leon Sinks Geological Area yesterday. We had the perfect weather for a change — sunny, breezy, and not at all humid. Best of all, the mosquitoes haven’t yet risen to suck the blood of every last living thing in Florida, so we were able to make our way quite unmolested.

Anything Ãron might have said to the contrary about me getting my head stuck in a tree near Big Dismal is entirely untrue. Anyone who knows me well knows just how much I love nature and with what elegant grace I find my way through it. Ahem.

This is a photo I took of the Little Dismal sinkhole. (I suppose they’re calling it “Hammock Sink” on the maps now, but I prefer the former.)

None of the trees in this picture attacked me.

This about sums it up:

http://70.86.201.113/imageserv2/temporary/PBF075ADZuthulu.html

Hooray for distributed computing. A Central Missouri State University team participating in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project has discovered the largest known prime number: M30402457, i.e., 2 to the 30,402,457th power minus 1. I’m not going to paste the entire number here, but if you want to plop the debutante prime into your conspiracy decoder rings, GIMPS has posted the entire 9,152,052 digit number here.

If you’re not already playing with proteins or listening for little green men through Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), you might consider donating your computer’s down time to GIMPS. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a financial award for the first individual or team to discover a prime number with at least 10,000,000 decimal digits, and GIMPS is willing to share the prize money.