Author: Wil

Anne and I went up to Oregon this weekend to visit her grandmother. We try to make this trip at least 4 times a year, and the Autumn trip is always our favorite. The changing leaves, and cool weather restore a lot of our hit points, and this year getting away from the chows in the house gave us an extra 2d4 that we didn’t even realize we needed until we had them.

We always stay in Ashland, and every time we visit, we don’t want to come back to Los Angeles. I think we have officially made it our dream to eventually retire there.

While we were there, I took this picture, which you can embiggen at flickr via the magic of clicking:

“Anne’s a hairdresser and I’m a writer, so when we saw these calaveras right next to each other in an Ashland storefront this weekend, I had to stop and take a picture.

Unfortunately, I had to choose between having a slight reflection on the glass, or only having one of them in focus, so I opted to share this one. Trust me, it’s better than the alternative.”

I’ll upload some of the other pictures I took, mostly of changing leaves and shockingly tame deer when I get some of this actual work that piled up while I was gone done.

WWdN reader Katie D. was inspired by yesterday’s audiobook post, and sent me this incredibly awesome piece of art:

Several readers sent me this story from the Mail Tribune about some of Stand By Me’s locations. If you are up in Southern Oregon, and you want to see some of the train tracks and locations we walked along in Stand By Me, now you know how to find them.

I heard from WWdN reader Mike Massee that the trestle we ran across, which is located in Northern California, is being torn down. He was recently there, and took some beautiful pictures of it.

If you want to get your very own 8-bit clown sweater T-shirt, you can still do that.

Speaking of T-shirts, I haven’t pointed to the Wil Says Don’t Be A Dick T-shirt in a long time. I think I’ll do that right now. POINT! POINT! POINT!

I wrote the introduction to John Scalzi’s Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. The book has shipped, and at least one reader liked it. Yay!

My dad and I went to the Dodger game last night. It was a hell of a game, right up until Torre decided to manage his bullpen like an 8 year-old playing MLB ’06 on the PS2.

I learned two things while I was at the game last night. First, the quality of an over-priced shitty cheese pizza is improved one million percent by the judicious application of jalapeños. You will pay for it 18 hours later, but pair it with an equally over-priced, shitty beer and it’s almost worth it. Second, a baseball game with your dad is great, but a playoff game with your dad – especially the first one you’ve ever attended together – is awesome. The last time the Dodgers were in the NLCS, I was 16, firmly in the grip of teenage angst, and I didn’t care about baseball precisely because it was important to my dad. Even though the Dodgers gave us a heartbreaking loss last night, it was a victory for me in the only way that really mattered.

. . . fuckin’ Dodgers.