Last week, I spoke with Michael and Evo for their Slice of Sci-Fi podcast. Our interview is around twenty minutes or so, I guess, and is included in Episode #43.

I dig their podcast, and I especially dig how they’ve built the website for Slice of Sci-Fi. I think I’m going to steal take a lot of inspiration from their design when I make Radio Free Burrito a real, once-a-week, I’m-serious-about-this-after-all podcast.

This morning, my ten-minutes-a-day thing is kind of a challenge, because there’s really nothing to write about. Honestly. Nothing has happened since yesterday that I can make even remotely interesting.

I thought about joking, thusly:

So long, suckers!

I sat down to check e-mail this morning, and discovered that I hit the trifecta: I won a lottery in New Zealand, another one in Nigeria, and got an offer to become the legal guardian for some Irish billionaire who’ll give me a whole bunch of money just for showing up.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be under a pile of money.

But that’s cheap and too easy, and I wasn’t really willing to go all the way with it and tell you about how I’m going to have the biggest penis in the universe that’s built for maximum loving, daring . . .  so I’ll see if I can dig anything else interesting out of my skull.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Nope. Nothing.

OH! I know. I’m quite proud of this week’s Games of our Lives, which is a game called Astro Fighter. I wish you’d all go over to the AV Club to read it. Thankyouverymuch.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day writing next week’s Games of our Lives, as well as a review of a new game (I probably shouldn’t discuss specifics right now) but it was really fun to pick a classic arcade game that dovetailed with the current console game I reviewed.

When I was done with that, I did a short training walk with Anne and the dogs. We’re nowhere near running, yet, but it still feels great to get out and walk every single day.

OH! This is cool: Anne, the kids, and I are going to run in the 10th Annual Race For the Cure at the Rosebowl on February 26th. We did it last year, and it was Hawesome. We’re not going to do any fundraising for this race, but we will be fundraising for the RnR Marathon later this year. I am planning some REALLY cool fundraising events, and I’ve even convinced Anne to write in a special blog that we’re building just for that.

Of course, if any of you reading this are interested in contributing $5 or $10 for the Race for the Cure, I bet we could raise a few hundred dollars for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. If you’re interested, send me an e-mail or mention it in comments, and we’ll figure out a way to take your donation. In fact, now that I think about it, it would be Hawesome (and probably pretty easy) to raise at least $500 in tiny donations, if the stats about people who read my blog are true.

Okay, so this entry isn’t entirely lame, and at least I’ve stayed on target for writing something every morning. That’s helping wake up the part of my creative monkey that needs to be jumping around my head to finish the book.

E-mail from a WWdN:iX reader:

Wil,

I wanted to touch base with you about your books "Just A Geek" and "Dancing Barefoot"

Who knew they would be so hard to find? Granted I don’t live in the biggest town I still thought Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million would have them in stock.

Turns out they both file your works under "Star Trek", oops. I guess they haven’t read your blog.

Barnes & Noble won’t even stock it, because "Star Trek bios don’t sell," according to one of their buyers.

Sigh.

A late afternoon mug of Yerba Mate tea, and the sugar from a glass (okay, two glasses) of chianti with dinner resulted in my favorite middle of the night activity: the 2:30 AM wide-awake-racing-brain.

I sat up in bed, reached over to my nightstand, and picked up my glass of water. In the soft glow of my alarm clock, I saw my kitty, Biko, stir in the laundry basket of clothes I’ve been meaning to put away for three days.

I gulped down about half the glass, and when I lay back down into bed, Biko jumped up, walked across the comforter, and snuggled into my chest, purring so loudly it was like a little massage on my mighty pectoral muscles.

I rubbed his little face for a few minutes, and tried to convince my brain to stop singing Sade and reciting Lewis Black jokes so I could fall back asleep. In that weird fuge state that often comes in the middle of the night, I’m not sure when I drifted back to sleep, but I woke again at 4:25 AM, my brain blasting "Slave Song," joined now by my stomach which really wanted to get rid of the sweet Italian sausage I had with dinner.

I sat back up, drained the remaining half of my water, and lay down onto my back. I let my brain sing at me while I tried to convince my stomach that it should do a lot of digesting, instead of throwing up.

"Throwing up is exactly what they’d expect," I reasoned, "if you throw up, they win."

I have no idea who "they" were, but it was the middle of the night, so it made perfect sense to me.

While my stomach formulated a response, which was something like, "Blarrghhh . . . . squarrrrrllooogeee . . .  fweeeennnn . . ." Biko jumped back up onto the bed, and walked back over to me. He was still purring, but this time he snuggled down into the comforter next to my shoulder, and pressed his little face against my cheek, just like his brother Sketch used to do.

I turned my attention away from my bitchy stomach, tuned out my singing brain, and focused on Biko’s little purrbox. I drifted quickly back to sleep, and woke up to Riley sniffing at my face, while Ferris sat at the foot of my bed, head cocked to one side while she waited for me to get out of bed.

My brain was silent, and though I had a little bit of a red wine headache, my stomach just felt hungry. I reached out and scratched Riley’s little monster face. Ferris thumped her tail against my dresser as I got out of bed and pulled on my robe. Biko was back in the laundry basket, happily sleeping on his back, as I walked out to the kitchen.

"Is there coffee?" I asked Anne. "I’m dead ’til I gets me coffee."

After dinner tonight, Nolan ran off to IM one of his friends, and left Anne, Ryan, and me in the dining room.

"Dude, you totally need to get me a shirt like that," Ryan said. He pointed to my "Choose your weapon" shirt from Jinx, that features six polyhedral dice.

"Like this?" I said. "What qualifies you for a shirt like this?"

"Dude!" He said, "I totally have a bag filled with those dice in my bedroom!"

"And you use them to actually play . . . when?"

"Well, I’d use them all the time, but someone never made a campaign for me!"

A little bit of me died inside.

"So, you see, I’m still qualified." He leaned back in his chair, and took a long, satisfied drink from his water glass.

"Dude, I’ve been playing D&D longer than you’ve been . . . well . . . anything." I said. "I think I’m a better judge of who is qualified and who is not."

We were playing nerd chicken and I could sense Ryan searching for his next play.

"Besides," I said, "It’s nerdtopia in there — " I pointed toward my office, "so if you really wanted to ‘choose your weapon,’ you could easily take care of business."

Now, here’s the thing: I can’t remember what Ryan said next, but it was a great burn. It was an awesome, classic, soundtrack-stopping burn.

I came back the only way I could: empty parental threats.

"I am such a huge geek," I said. "I will embarrass you so hardcore, you won’t know what hit you." I snorted, for effect.

"Oh yeah? What are you going to do to embarrass me?" He said.

"Anne," I said, "You should sleep in tomorrow. I’ll take the kids to school, and I’ll pick them up, too."

"Mom!" Nolan called from the living room, "I think I’m going to ride my bike to school tomorrow, okay?"

Ryan gulped. I went to the kitchen. As soon as I was around the corner, and he couldn’t see me, I smiled to myself. From the dining room, I head Ryan chuckle.

This is how we live. This is why I do, well, everything.