Starting this off with a bit of coolness: "Principles and Parameters" made the Tangent Online 2002 Recommended Reading List!

I really don't feel like doing anything today except going to the coffee shop and getting some writing done. Well, lunch should probably happen at some point, too. It's been a few days since I've been to my favourite restaurant, so I might go see if they've got the bacon-cheddar-potato soup I really like.

23 "variations" left to write in the Poe story, which is kind of a lot to knock out between now and the 15th. But I did two last night, and some of them have been really short. Like less than 200 words short. My ideas for them are getting more and more solid, so it's just a matter of getting these weird little prose poems out on paper. 23 mini-scenes in 8 days? We'll see, I guess.

One of my two stories for the Spycraft: The Most Dangerous Game expansion for When Darkness Comes (a boardgame) is finished, and I should finish the other one tonight. I still haven't heard anything back from the editor, which is more than a little frustrating, since I sent it to her three days ago and haven't even gotten a "Hi, got your piece, looking it over now" yet. Yargh.

This bioinformatics project may end up more frustrating than I originally expected. Yesterday I compiled a list of over 1200 different DNA transcription factors (in humans, mice, and rats) that we'll be searching MedLine abstracts for. Already, Vladimir Leontiev (the biologist part of this project, and owner of one of the cooler Russian names I've heard) has noticed an abstract containing a transcription factor that wasn't listed in the TransFac database, so I'm not sure what we should do about that. Add new transcription factors to the list as we discover them, I guess. *shrug*

It's going to be a busy weekend. There's a water survival FTX from 10:30-13:00 tomorrow, and as soon as that's done, I need to take off for Jefferson City, MO for an HWA-Midwest meeting. They want me to read P&P, which I'm more than happy to do, because then maybe some of them will rec it for the Stokers. Three more nominations and I'm on the preliminary ballot, which would just be neat beyond neat. And then Sunday is drill -- ugh -- but hey, I'm a baby officer now, so I can sit down with my little black notebook and look busy and people won't freakin' bother me.

Coffee will be my friend this weekend. I think I shall go get started now.