In Memoriam...

Went to a friend's grandfather's memorial service today...I knew the guy, he was a great man who died Sunday. His family found out he had terminal cancer four weeks ago. Really not cool.
Other things? Built a trebuchet in World History.

FPOTD: He powers off his laptop and slides it into the drawer of his desk. In the morning he’ll send it off to his editor and that will be that. Tomorrow will be my first day of retirement. How swell. There was a time when writing was a task, something to be done for lack of anything better to do, and he would avoid it in favor of anything he deemed more important. But that had changed. For the past fifty years it seemed the flow of words would not stop, and his fingers had only to catch them and write them down on the way out. There was a time when this lonely man would sit at his desk and stare at a yellow legal pad, open to the first page, inviting him to write a word. And yet he would sit, staring, unsure of how to start. Unsure of the right way to start. His future self would have laughed at that, of course, but only because his future self knew something he did not. That it was not how the thing started that mattered, but yet how it ended. That was the kicker.