Robert’s Blog

I am pleased to report that the Strohmeyer household has entered into phase 2 of its nursery development program. Apart from a single nightstand (partly visible in the lower-left corner of the image here), all furniture has been removed from the room and the walls have been taped for painting. I’ve got two gallons of Waverly Soft Lemon paint (in eggshell finish) and a Wagner PowerRoller at the ready. By this time Monday, the room will officially be in nursery mode.

Once the room is painted, we’ll be moving on to furniture. So far, we have four pieces that we’re retaining from our old selection: Two matching white nightstands (one of which has already been mentioned), and a bookshelf and hutch that will both need to be stripped/sanded and repainted white. Then we need to settle on a crib, which has so far proved challenging.

UPDATE 1/26/08 7:30PM: The room is looking pretty yellow now.

UPDATE 1/30/08 6:36PM: With the paint dry and the room reasonably aired out, I’ve now removed the blue painter’s tape from the trim and put all the cover plates back on the wall sockets and light switches. This isn’t our crib, by the way; it’s just the cosleeper we’ll be using to keep her within reach for the first few months. The real crib should be here at the end of February.

Well, one of many reasons, I suppose: Immigration officials detaining, deporting American citizens

I’m in the market for a new umbrella. Ideally, I’d like something that can tuck away neatly in my already overloaded man purse, but still stand up to fierce winds. Any suggestions?

This is video from last Friday’s wind storm at my marina. Fortunately, Yare came out of this unscathed. (Thanks, Rick, for checking in on her.)

My Amazon Kindle arrived yesterday morning, and I spent the day reading William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition — a book I had been inexplicably unable to enjoy in print form — on it. Anyway, it got me to wondering whether cyberpunk is still considered a distinct subgenre of science fiction. In most ways, I’ve stopped thinking of near-future dystopian fiction as science-oriented at all. I mean, how can a story that contains no more imaginary technology than the average Tom Clancy novel really be defined as sci fi? If cyberpunk does still exist as a genre, is it possible that it has mutated enough to deserve its own separate branch of the literary evolutionary tree? If not, hasn’t it become simply Fiction in the conventional sense?