Surprising no one...



I've been doing lots of TV watching over the past few days - which is a surprising new development for me, since we don't actually own a television. (Patrick and I both grew up in houses without TVs, and after a stint of living with a TV in our first apartment, we swore never to have one again! It wouldn't be so bad if we only watched good shows, but since we both have the self-control of gnats, we ended up killing countless hours watching soul-deadeningly bad, un-fun shows.) But yay for the BBC iPlayer! Not only have we watched (and really enjoyed) the first three episodes of Torchwood, Season 2, but we spent last night watching nature programs - oddly enough, two different, completely unrelated documentaries on people raising orphaned otter cubs. The first one ("An Otter in the Family") was...meh. I loved the otter, but wasn't that impressed by the people involved. But the second show, "Raising Sancho", about a giant otter cub raised by a wildlife researcher and veterinarian in Brazil, was amazing, one of the most beautiful nature documentaries I've ever seen, even though I ended up absolutely sobbing at the end. I'm really glad I wached it even though there are heartbreaking elements in it. (I should have been warned by the BBC's description of it as "touching"...sigh. But on the other hand, I might not have watched it if I'd known it would make me cry, and that would have been a real loss.)

And speaking of things that have made me cry... This is my first year voting on the Nebulas, and I got the preliminary ballot a few days ago. All the stories are provided online for SFWA members to read before voting, so I went through the list to read the pieces I hadn't read before - and I'm so glad I did. Kij Johnson's story "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs Of North Park After the Change" was one of the best, harshest, and most perfect stories about dogs and humans that I've ever read, and yes, I cried at the end...but I'm still glad I read it. And Maya was glad, too, since I spent a long time cuddling her afterwards.