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I was working on a story about my childhood that features the constellation Orion when the phone rang. Caller ID said it was Anne.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Can you go outside?” She said.
“Sure,” I said.
“Okay. Walk out onto the porch, and look to the West.”
I got up from my desk, and made my way to the front of the house.
“How’s are my grills?” She said. We call our dogs The Grills instead of The Girls. I have no idea why.
I put on my I’m-talking-to-the-dogs voice. “How are you Riley?”
She jumped up at me and barked.
“Riley says that she’s got teeth,” I said.
“And how’s Ferris?”
“She’s got her pout on.” I said. “I think she’s been watching the Pods too much.”
“Or she wants to go for a walk,” Anne said.
“Maybe,”I I said. I can’t say the word “walk” or “around” or “go for” or any words that rhyme with them, because . . . well, The Grills are smarter than the average pooches.
I opened the front door, and walked out onto our porch. The smell of freshly-cut grass brought a smile to my face, if a sneeze to my nose, and the cool September evening was a welcome break from the stifling September days we’ve been having.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m outside. What am I looking for?”
“Just look up to the West,” she said.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I saw it: Jupiter and Venus, low in the pale blue sky, clear as anything.
“Do you see them?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“The planets?”
“Oh,” I said, “I thought you meant the Kims, who leave their drapes open.”
“. . . what?”
“I’m just kidding. Of course the planets! Thank you for sharing that with me.” I looked some more. “You know what else is cool? Those tall palm trees across the street are silhouetted black against the blue sky, and the crescent moon is sitting right on top of one of them. It’s like a painting or something.”
“Oh! One of those seventies oil paintings with a really heavy wooden frame!” She said.
“Yeah, and a beach, and some velvet!” I said.
“And it’s in the living room, right next to that naked lady statue that hangs from the brass chain with oil dripping down wires around her!”
“Dude,” I said, “you just described my next door neighbor’s house from my childhood.”
“I think I just described everyone’s next door neighbor’s house from our childhood.”
Ryan called from inside the house. “Wil, I need some help with my homework!”
“I have to go help Ryan,” I said.
“Oh, with what?” She said.
“I don’t know, but I hope it’s not math.” I said.
“Yeah, math is hard,” she said.
“It sure is. When will you be home?”
“In about an hour,” she said.
“Okay, I’m counting.” I said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I hung up the phone, and looked up into the sky. Venus looked back, which felt very appropriate.

I’m playing in the WCOOP again today, and I’ll be live blogging the action over at CardSquad, for those who are interested. You can also download the PokerStars client and search for player “Wil Wheaton” if you’d like to sweat me from the rail. The tournament begins at 3PM EDT, which is in about six minutes. Eep!

Like everyone else, I’ve been reading The Interdictor for the last week or so. I’ve even gone so far as to add a live bookmark to Firefox, so I can quickly tell if he’s updated or not.
I have found his insights to be very interesting and often moving, like this paragraph from last night:

It’s funny when you notice the effects of sleep deprivation on yourself. Keeping this journal reminds me of Flowers for Algernon. I catch myself making careless errors every now and then. Silly things like forgetting to grab a flashlight or the right keys. And then there’s the deterioration of physical coordination. I have to go down the stairs more slowly and I make a lot more typos so I’m constantly hitting the backspace while I’m typing. And it’s taking a little longer to process information. The days start to blur too and it hasn’t been two weeks yet. I bet some psychology major could have a field day tracking my psychological state for the last 10 days or so.

His story is amazing. If you’ve got some time, it’s worth heading over to his Live Journal, and reading the archives.

In this week’s Games of our Lives, I ask:

Ever wonder what Donkey Kong would have been like if the game had talked to you in a weird underwater voice? Or what if, instead of playing a tough little carpenter fighting a giant cool gorilla, you were a wussy little lumberjack fighting a giant lame-o bird? And what if the game really, really sucked?

Head on over to the AV Club, if you’d like to know the answer.

I rarely visit websites or blogs directly any more, because I prefer to read everything in Bloglines. I do that because I move among several different computers each day, and — because Bloglines is web-based — no matter where I am, I can see if one of my sites has been updated. I try to hit the actual sites I read at least once every few weeks, because sometimes there are announcements or other content that doesn’t make it into the RSS feed . . . but I thought it would be swell if I made a post for all you RSS readers, so you can see the news that you’re missing if you don’t see my smilin’ mug every day at WWdN.
At the top of my blog, you’ll see this:

By popular demand, you can now see or hear me read from my books Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot! If you like what you hear, you may want to pick up a copy of Just A Geek: Teh Audiobook. Or not. Whatever. I’m not the boss of you.
You can also find me on PokerStars.com as “Wil Wheaton”, and at blogging.la. My column The Games of our Lives is updated every Tuesday night in The Onion AV Club. I contribute poker stories to CardSquad, and I am an editor on the Suicide Girls (NSFW) technology newswire (SFW).

So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.