Current mood:

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April wrap-up
The highlight of April was Minicon, at which I not only ran the 4th Annual Minicon Medallion Hunt, but published the con newsletter.  It was mostly devoted to the hunt (which was originally started in order to provide material for the newsletter), but each of the four issues included at least half a page of other content.  Most of it was given to me through a submissions box; there was no investigation to speak of.  I enjoyed doing the editing, though, and it impressed me how perfectly each issue came out at exactly the right length.  I'll probably do it again next year.  I also have plenty of ideas for next year's Medallion Hunt, and I liked the way the con went overall.

I went to the Minicon Devonian Ductina party, which allowed me to get the solution to a devious puzzle the designers of the pocket program hid therein, as well as to celebrate my father's birthday in a place where people would sing for him and to hear people's excited thoughts following the convention.

I observed April Fool's Day by buying milk and orange juice and then swapping them into each others' containers, which my father enjoyed but my mother may not have noticed.

Game parties have been fun lately, with a lot of cheery attendees.  Barac Wiley gave my father a renowned (and expensive) farming game called Agricola, which was great fun--and amazingly, Barac and I both like it.  I haven't been playing many games, though, preferring to take the role of co-host or to retreat to my computer.  I seem to be most productive when there are other things I could (or will soon) be doing; it's an understandable irony.

I've continued work on my interactive novel.  On the 27th, for example, I spent all day renumbering and then rearranging the 251 sections, which is something most readers won't even appreciate, but numbers are important to me and I wanted to make sure each section was given exactly the right number.  I have a giant chart of all the branches and a smaller chart showing showing how each family of branches connects to the others to prevent any loops.  And then there's futzing over margin size and page number font and so on.  Pretty much all that remains is to give all the sections one last revision, and then I'll (most likely) make it available through CreateSpace.  I've been surprised by how many people are showing interest and say they'll want a copy--even a Somali-born student of mine.

In the meantime, April saw the deadline for making use of the offer CreateSpace made all 2007 NaNoWriMo winners for a free proof copy, so I took a break from my '08 novel to reformat and section my '07 novel.  The book looks pretty good, but as I haven't revised it since November '07, it'll be a while before I create a copy I'll be ready to let anyone read.

Due to the fact that they haven't grown in yet, I was able to trim the hedges in a few hours on one day, a chore that normally takes several horrible sessions.

I finally finished the His Dark Materials trilogy, after taking my long, sweet time with it.  I thought it was fabulous, but the ending left a lot to be desired.  I've been tangling with concepts in physics and mathematics that I never studied, and reading a book about play therapy.  I also discovered a new webcomic that interested me, called Out There, and read the archive.  Aside from Bruno, I think it's the only webcomic I've ever read and enjoyed with no fantastic elements whatsoever.

And that's all I feel like saying about April.