David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

“Charlie the Purple Giraffe” has now been adapted to audio at The Drabblecast, complete with classic cartoon music and sound effects. I love the production, and I am pleased to have been asked to provide the voice of Charlie. You can listen to it here (embedded QuickTime), or download the MP3 here.

Meanwhile, just to keep me humble, I received three rejections in a span of 12 hours. This is the downside of writing and submitting a lot. However, I’ve already resubmitted two of them and sent a query about the third.

I’d been noticing lately a funny noise coming from the front end and the car pulling a bit to the right, and had made an appointment for a front end alignment. However, on our way to dinner Thursday night (with writers Mark and Elizabeth Bourne at the home of our friends Janet and Ron Lunde), the problem seemed much worse. We pulled over and took a look, and found that the right front tire was completely flat. I could have changed it myself, I suppose, but we’re paying for AAA, and as it turned out a big dyke with the right tools could change it a lot more quickly and easily than I could. Unfortunately, because I drove on the tire for a day or more after it had gone flat, it was too damaged to be repaired and had to be replaced. I don’t feel too bad about that, though, as the other front tire was low enough on tread that it made sense to replace both of them. The good news is that I could then cancel the front-end alignment appointment.

The tire repair ate up much of this morning, and the rest of it was taken up by a trip to the UPS store to fax the Certificate of Coverage from our just-expired COBRA to our two new insurance companies. Kate now has a conventional plan, and I have one of those plans with a Health Savings Account. My plan has a $5000 deductible, which means that unless something serious happens it will never pay anything at all, but it’s inexpensive and it comes with all kinds of discount cards for prescription drugs, diagnostics, medical imaging, etc…. which remind me a lot of the kind of crap free software that new PC’s tend to come with. Basically it is medical disaster insurance; the HSA is used to pay for regular and minor medical expenses. I’m a little uncomfortable with this plan but it does make the best economic sense for us, for a variety of reasons.

In the afternoon we saw Star Trek with our friend Nancy McClure, followed by a lovely dinner with her and her husband Martin. Omigod. It’s been a long time since I wanted to go right back and see a movie a second time! And we definitely will be doing that while it’s still in its first run. There’s so much amazing detail in every shot! The worst thing I can say about this movie is that there’s way too much lens flare. I am a happy Trekker.