THE SHORT MONTH

I seem to recall promising to talk about short stories this month, as well as try to write a short story. Neither has happened. I have been reading short stories, of course. I like short stories. It's a great format. Obviously, I read mostly science fiction and fantasy stories these days in large part due to my subscriptions to Asimov's and F&SF (I've gone through periods of New Yorker subscriptions too, which yielded even more stories). I also like to read story collections - I read 34 from 2002 to 2006, an average of almost 7 per year. So far this year, I've read one collection and I'm in the middle of another.

And speaking of this year, I've read 51 stories so far - not quite one a day. To the best of my recollection (I didn't keep track at the time), I read 29 of them in January and 22 of them in February. I'm going at a much slower pace on everything this year but that's still not too bad.

For comparison's sake, I've read 33 comics so far this year, including 3 trades and 3 original graphic novels. January saw me read 13 single issues, 2 OGNs, and one trade; February's breakdown was 14 single issues, 2 trades, and one OGN. I also bought a couple comics today that won't get read until tomorrow at the earliest. That's fairly consistent.

I've gotten 15 new CDs this year, 12 of them dowloaded and 3 purchased. 9 of them were in January - 7 downloaded and 2 puchased; the remaining 6 were in February, all downloads but one. I also downloaded 4 songs that were b-sides on single releases.

On the DVD front, I've finally resumed 24 Season 2 after a couple weeks of inactivity and now have only two episodes left plus a disc full of extras and a number of commentaries. Grant and I are down to only commentaries left on The Simpsons Season 8 - 4 of them. Hard to believe we could be finished in a couple days...it's only taken us months (and seen the release of Season 9 come and go!). Beyond that, I think I've watched 4 DVDs via netflix so far this year...I'm not sure, because I haven't really been keeping track of that. I think I've written about them all but I'm not going to go back and look - I've given plenty of numbers so far.

I'm behind on my magazine reading - after I finish the Newsweek I'm working on I still have 3 issues left to catch up; I have the current issue of Entertainment Weekly and just bought the new Wizard today as well.

I'm not saying any of this to complain at all - I may feel like I'm behind on a lot of things (and should finish at least one of the songs I've been working on) but I'm enjoying life. It'll all get read eventually - not having new episodes of all these TV shows for a while will help a bit too. And I've done pretty well at posting this month too. Small victories.