Since I started The Life That Late He Led, I've always had one thing in mind: he lives that life, and then it ends, and Twilight resumes her life as best she can. The trick was finding a good reason for that life to end, other than, well, that's what life does, most of the time.

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If I seem to be resting on my laurels, it's mostly due to surprise that I have laurels in the first place.

That said, The way she used to be and Somepony New have both reached 50 likes recently, and The way she used to be now has over 800 views, which I find gratifying.

I am trying not to feel better about my low productivity after finding a new chapter to one of my favorites, a year and half after the last one.

The Bullseye is the last page of Entertainment Weekly, and it's something of a repository for single-line snark. There's a reference this week (issue #1345) to Pottermore, of which they said:

Another year, another 600 additional Harry Potter short stories.

Even granted the fact that Pottermore is a bit more complex than FIMFiction -- six hundred? That's a slow week here.

The Mystery Virus -- unless, of course, it was a bacterium -- has taken its leave of me, and good riddance.

If you're celebrating a holiday this week, I hope it's utterly wonderful. (And if you're not, I still hope things are utterly wonderful for you.)

This ongoing illness has finally snapped into a pattern I've seen before, and I didn't like it much then:

The medical profession's answer to my ongoing cough is a nasty lozenge seemingly made from the bowls in which Chia Pets are grown, which, I am told, will actually increase the level of coughing. It is a measure of how bad things are that I accepted this at face value.

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About an hour into the workday today, I got hit with what might be an ordinary rhinovirus -- or it might not. It continues to get worse, and it's doubtful whether I'll get any sleep tonight.

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Saturday I was coming home from the grocery store, and up the street marched three girls, clearly led by the one in the center. In days of old I'd have thought Heathers; this time I thought Dazzlings. For all I know, the one on the right may have been carrying a taco. Either way, it was unexpected, my neighborhood being basically split between young families and old empty-nesters. (I am, of course, one of the latter.) This is a two-lane street with parking along one side only; they

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The third Soft Spectrum album has been released, and like its predecessors, it's a showcase for chill, a genre -- at least, I think it's a genre -- that I have found welcoming in the past. The series is presided over by Kyoga, who has composed some stuff that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

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If I'm interpreting the new status indicators correctly — and who says I am? — I got to my 1000th favorite this weekend. Assuming I'm running my usual pace, this means I've read somewhere around 1800 stories in the last 27 months. (Blatant selection bias: I'm far more likely to start a story if something about it suggests I'll want to keep up with it.)

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