Happy December, my darlings. It's my birthday month (I turn 32 on the 12th), and thus a time of great celebration across the land. (Even if I did spend the weekend being vomited on by a sick baby who, it seems, probably has asthma -- and an ear infection! -- in addition to his cold/flu. But, see, that was November, not universally a time for celebration, though the turkey and mashed potatoes were nice.)

This morning I had coffee and pie for breakfast. And my baby didn't wake until 8 a.m. And no sign of vomit or wheezing. You see? Already so auspicious!

Other things: It's Tumbarumba time! When Ben "Benny the Rose" Rosenbaum asked if I wanted to contribute a story to a strange project he was doing with facilitator of strange art Ethan Ham, I didn't even ask for details, I just said, "Sure." I'd had an idea for a weird story about the secret lives of objects for a while, and, thus, wrote "A Steadfast Tin Soldier" for him. To read the story, you have to get Tumbarumba.... and then you have to get lucky. Here's their explanation:

Tumbarumba is an add-on for Firefox web browsers. It quietly sits in the background, occasionally inserts a fragment of a story into a webpage that is being viewed. The result is an absurd sentence that is reminiscent of the surrealist exquisite corpse game. If the inserted fragment (we call the fragments "tumbarumbas") is spotted and clicked upon, the entire story will emerge and eventually take over the page.

So install the add-on (which is easy), and fiction will begin occasionally quietly inserting itself into web browsing experience. I've had it installed for a while (we contributors were also sorta kinda beta testers, I guess), and I get a Tumbarumba in one tab or another once or twice a day. The stories I've read so far are AWESOME, including great stuff by David Moles and David J. Schwartz, and I can't wait to stumble upon the rest.

In life news, my vacation is lovely, though over soon. I'm off work today, and tomorrow, then back to the magazine mines, but that's okay. I'm feeling refreshed, and my to-do list has been demolished -- Flytrap stuff mailed, Audible intros recorded, revisions on my novel The Nex zooming along zoomishly and expected to be finished by the time I head back to work... Things are going okay.