Jim Ottaviani

I’ve had the Japanese version and it’s ethereal in both texture and flavor. So, a marvel but not a delight.

Altered States. Animal heads on human bodies have freaked me out ever since. (Bet if I watched now it was lame and/or laughable, but I’m not gonna!)

Woohoo!

Again, glad you’re better, or sr least on the mend!

Yeah, and that should have been an easy one for them to know. To my mind it comes down to our crappy healthcare system: only step in at times of trauma, and don’t give the docs time to review the whole of a patient’s history so they can ask the right questions and understand the answers in context.

Glad you’re okay, and so true: On a serious note the lack of a baseline is a big problem for diagnosis! Doctors testing a friend who had a severe head trauma on math worried that skills were lost until she (and her husband) basically said “Hey, writer here, not a CPA…I’ve always been bad at that.”

Thanks! The base of the tray is also construction 2x4s, so if I need a wider surface I can flip it. Height is 34.5”, tallish for an average
person like me. I figured I can cut the legs down if I decide it’s too high for comfort when planing. (The whole thing disassembles easily, by design.)

Vintage Craftsman 5195 vise

Yost tail vise

Found a never-unboxed 50 year old Craftsman 5195 locally at a great price & bought it to use, not display. Sorry collectors! Heavy, with a superb quick release mechanism. The tail vise is a new, inexpensive Yost model. Homemade (w/my blacksmith brother’s help) holdfasts will do the rest, I hope! 2/2

Homemade workbench

Finally finished the workbench. I’m almost tempted to make another, since having one before I started this would have made life a lot easier. (So would having a table saw, jointer, & planer but I have no room, am cheap, and am basically afraid of powerful spinning blades. So hand tools it was!) 1/2

Autoplay videos somehow got turned on, perhaps via latest update. I sure as heck didn’t do it myself … what the heck, @bsky.app?

The cover of Sara Ryan's novel Mountain Upside Down. Art by Ana von Huben.

A funny and heartfelt LGBTQIA- middle grade novel set against the backdrop of family drama and a library funding campaign in a small town. Alex Eager lives in Faillin, OR with her grandmother, a retired librarian. Life should be great for Alex, since she finally worked up the courage to ask her best friend P) if they could be more than friends and she said yes. But their new relationship will have to be long distance. because Pl is moving On top of that, Alex is worried that something is wrong with her increasingly forgetful grandmother. And to make matters worse, Faillin is holding a referendum on library funding, and things aren't looking good. Will anything good for Alex ever last? Mountain Upside Down is a beautifully crafted story of a thirteen-year-old girl finding her place in her family and her community. It's a queer-positive story that doesn't center coming out, It's a story of a library's role in a community that doesn't feature book banning. And it's a story of long-held family secrets and resentment that focuses not on final resolution but learning how to communicate again.

Huge, HUGE congrats to Sara Ryan @ryansara.bsky.social, whose novel Mountain Upside Down is. nominated for the 2026 Oregon Book Award for Middle Grade/Young Adult Literature! www.oregonlive.com/living/2026/...

Same re. Jaime X’s Locas
Howard Chaykin’s “American Flagg!”
Dave Stevens’ “Rocketeer”

I've been waiting on a book about Stoic ethics for months — it's overdue at the public library. The current borrower clearly hasn't read it. :)

Meanwhile, somebody I don't know is snowblowing our whole block right now.

So…still not a Cynic.

Giddy Trump Struts All Around White House With Nobel Peace Prize In Mouth WASHINGTON—Panting excitedly as he trotted from room to room displaying his prized possession, a giddy President Donald Trump was reportedly seen Friday strutting all around the White House with a Nob...

In case you need some dark humor, this was what I needed today:

theonion.com/giddy-trump-...

❤️ this but wasn’t able to 🧑‍🚀 this…an inexplicable user interface omission here on Bluesky!

Watched two excellent documentaries over the holidays. “Jane” and “The Greatest Night in Pop”. Watch and you’ll love Lionel Richie and Jane Goodall even more than you already do.

A forlorn landscape of layered rocks in the foreground, with hills fading into the background haze. At upper top right, a small crescent moon, and a bright star.

Open up this picture fully.

Then look at the surface of Mars.

Then look up to the top right.

Spot Mars' moon Phobos high in the sky.

Then notice the bright spot beside Phobos.

That's Earth.

As minor as they get: (1) Left a restaurant in NYC during the MoCCA festival and was told I was having breakfast back-to-back with Julia Roberts. I had no clue. (2) Left my table for a break at another MoCCA and upon returning was told Paul Giamatti had just left after buying one of my books.

jamesloganauthor Suggested for you Follow Being a writer is cool because it's like always having homework and then you die.

whew

That this exists within walking distance of my house makes my head hurt…eyes in particular, given the decorating choices, so I'm glad I can't see inside when I look up.

(Also, why all the telephoto shots of Michigan Stadium? Will buyers be sad to learn they're so far from Saturday traffic jams?)

Bella insisting that now is not the time to read. Toy toy toy toy!

What’s in your lap (or more accurately and saucily, between your legs) tonight?

That makes perfect sense. I imagine it works as a diary, after a fashion, and if you haven’t completed all the thoughts in the old one then setting it aside isn’t a good idea!

How about this: get a friend to draw something on the first page so it’s not new? The more inept the better, since then you’d know you’re improving it. (If only I weren’t so far away I’d volunteer, since I’d NAIL the inept part!)

So true. It wouldn’t surprise me if cultures throughout history have noticed their combined intelligence and sociability and considered them close kin!

Thought and Memory,
my ravens, fly every day
the world over.
Each day I fear
that Thought might not return,
but I fear more for Memory.

…verse 20 of “Grimnismal (The Words of Odin in Disguise)” from The Poetic Edda, as translated by Jackson Crawford

Liquor cabinet with sparkling glasses in the winter light. And some liquor.

Good winter light on the new cabinet I made. Also featured are a highbrow version of lowbrow whiskey (the JD rye) and a lowbrow lowbrow moonshine (the Hocking Hills) that punches well above its weight class. And a bowl I turned.

(Probably not your cheapest option, though.)

I’ve been with Pair Networks since the late 1990s and they provide very reliable service and good support.

The dog: Leslie Knope
The cat: Ron Swanson

How did we not notice this before?

So aggravating! Recently we heard "your road was closed" when it was just a nearby intersection, and the driver obv. didn't bother to reroute. Separately, we were once told "we delivered it" and it took a long time for them to admit that their proof was a photo of the package *inside the truck*.