Last night as I was trying to find some dinner, waiting for Baby Z to be born, I passed a number of Irish bars in the neighborhood. For some reason — and I’m not an alky — the lure of the bars was palpable. For some reason I was overcome with the fear that I was going to ruin it all — that I would lose my job, go broke, lose the house, etc. etc. — and make a poor life for the then unborn Zoe. I’m getting over it now, because looking at her little face (this picture was taken at age ~150 minutes), you can’t help but wonder if everything is perfect in the world. Happy birthday, Zoe. I’ll do my best.

Roberta Austin of The Compulsive Reader offers this review of Half Mast. Thanks, Roberta!

Thank God — you can have ‘em!

Highlight something in Microsoft Word and hit Shift+F3. It cycles the selection through ALL CAPS, all lowercase, and First character of a sentence capped. Invaluable for cleaning up text.