Thanks to weird network events today, today’s post is potpourri. We’re going to have to schedule some server downtime at The Murkworks soon; I’m just hoping we can limp through January and do it in February, due to reasons. There’ll hopefully be an announcement before the downtime, and not after.

First, as some of you know, my partner Anna has medical news again. So to break out of that resulting mood, she’s put Faerie Blood on sale, both print and epub editions. And in better news, Carina Press has released the cover for her next book, Valor of the Healer. Check those out.

Most commentary and discussion that happens on this blog is over on the Livejournal and/or Dreamwidth echos, of all places. A little on tumblr. But I get comments here, too, so I check the spam folder for false positives. That’s where I found this:

Is there an echo in here?

…which is the first time I can recall seeing my own blog mined for response fodder for my own blog.

The spambots seem to be devolving. Goddammit, we were so close!

Also, some of you need this very badly. You’ll know who you are:

And this Earth Science Picture of the Day is lovely. I wish I’d taken it:

click to embiggen

That’s all for now. As I hope you can appreciate, I’m a little distracted. This is round five, if you count the two years of thyroid surgery, and between those two years and the newer issues – that’s the year I got hit by the car while out biking, and spent nine days unconscious in the ICU.

So things have been a bit… disturbed… for a while now. Hopefully Monday – the next appointment – will go well and all will be okay after all. That would be refreshing.