Four Rooms! And some fiction writing news!

Yes, I got four -- count 'em, four! -- rooms clean at the same time. My office is amazing without all that crap in it. Now I just need to get together with Doug and move my real desk -- my nice wooden desk with the credenza with the shelves and cubbyholes -- back upstairs (it's still in the basement from when we had the first floor remodeled -- almost two years ago), and I'll be in heaven.

Now in progress: The bedroom! It shouldn't take long. Cleaning it mostly involves picking up the clothes that are on the floor and then doing the broom-and-vacuum thing.

Fiction news: I recently got the check and contributor's copy for a story I sold ages ago. Felt nice to get things like that in the mail again! The anthology, titled Men on the Edge, is a collection of stories about gay men who participate in extreme BDSM. Oddly, I think this is one of the most emotionally sensitive and nuanced stories I've ever written. I reread it when the book came and had a marvelous moment of "Wow. I wrote that? That's really good." Felt nice. If you want to see the cover and find a link to the publisher, go to my erotica page.

Politics: I'm excited about most of Obama's cabinet and subcabinet team, but I am disappointed with his Secretary of Agriculture appointment, Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa. I'm worried that our agriculture policy will continue to be agribusiness as usual without thought to the many, many environmental and personal implications of what we grow.
Fun:

• LogoDesignLove.com has a piece showing the evolution of the Barack Obama campaign logo. I actually don't care much for the logo. The colors feel all fake and "wrong" to me. And I've never seen an American flag in it except when someone else points it out. To me, it looks like a sunrise viewed over a plowed field, which is all very bucolic but also awfully traditionally Americana for a "change" campaign. Just shows what I know, or don't know, I guess.


• Here are more of the challenged ballots from the Minnesota Senate race, in which votes are still being counted and recounted and re-recounted. We may be done by the end of the year . . . ?


• MSNBC has a darling story up as video about service dogs for disabled veterans being trained by other disabled veterans. What really grabbed me was when the vet said he couldn't sleep at night -- until he got his dog-in-training. With the dog in bed with him, no more trouble sleeping. Awesome.


• Here's a seasonal video about eggnog, the germs that live in it, and the utility of adding alcohol -- all in the interests of advancing science -- from Science Friday.