Jack is dead. No doubt. We'll lay him to rest in the backyard tomorrow. We console ourselves with the knowledge that he lived a longer and happier life than he would have outside, if only because he had a broken leg when we found him, and had somewhat limited mobility. At least he had enough to eat, and nothing tried to eat him in return. We might get another mantis sometime. I liked having one.

We've been watching Dead Like Me on DVD. I read a couple of good reviews of the series, and it sounded like something we'd enjoy, and, lo, we do. It reminds me a lot of Wonderfalls in some ways -- a certain snarkiness of tone, a young and reluctant heroine, weird stuff, charm. How come I've never heard of this shows in genre circle? Do y'all SF fans not watch it? Or did I just not hear about it? Seems like the kind of show fandom would get behind -- smart, funny, and supernatural.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming release of Millennium on DVD. The show went utterly to shit in its third season -- one of the most spectacular failures of a show I can ever remember, actually -- but the first two seasons are some of the best horror fiction ever put on film. So unrelentingly dark, so stylish. Occasionally self-important and portentous, yes, but that's Chris Carter, and the occasional misstep didn't detract from the show's impact. I'm looking forward to watching the first season again -- it's been long enough that I don't remember details.

Let's see, writing stuff. I sold two poems to Strange Horizons today, "Soul Searching" and "Making Monsters." "Soul Searching" is an exploration of the same idea that forms the core of "Life in Stone," the story that's upcoming in Lenox Avenue.

"Bluebeard and the White Buffalo" isn't quite done yet. I did some work on it over the weekend, but I'm still working out some stuff, trying to decide how much I need to spell out, and how much I can safely imply. I have a tendency to overwrite, so I'm trying to avoid that, probably not entirely successfully.

Heather's working away at her novel, revising the 30,000 words she's written already -- she's revised six chapters in the past two days! She plans to hit the back half of the book running and write the remainder. The first half is good good good, and I'm looking forward to reading the whole shebang.

I'm not reading anything in particular at the moment, strangely enough. Some poetry, some short stories in magazines, some Wodehouse stories, some non-fiction, some 'zines. I'm having trouble sustaining interest in novels this week, so I turned to things that require less sustained attention. I did take advantage of the Night Shade Books half-price sale to order a few things -- Hodge's Lies and Ugliness, Cady's Ghosts of Yesterday, and I pre-ordered Harrison's Course of the Heart. I've got some more Wodehouse coming in the mail, too. There are good books in my future.