You have cat to be kitten me!

So this incorrigible cutie came to stay with us today. She has a face <3
 
We're going to take it slow and keep her in her own room for a few days, and hope nub-cat and nose-cat will become friends. Anyone got any hot tips for introducing them?

Letter Rip!

I see you, progressively-minded DFW writers. I see you sick at heart about the state of the nation. I see you calling, writing, and patriotically jimmy-rustling our senators and representatives. I see you amping up for November.

And I am here to cheer you on, with a caveat - because it's not about November 6th for us here in Texas. It's about *March* 6th. There are a shedload of brand-new brilliant grassroots candidates who have poured THOUSANDS of hours and dollars into getting their names on the primary ballot for your selection pleasure - and if we don't roll out and support them, we're going to get whichever pre-approved comfortable establishmentarians the Party has chosen for us. 

If we vote like we've always voted, we're going to get what we've always gotten. 

Only 14% of registered voters from *either* major party voted in the Dallas County primaries last year, and the rest of North Texas wasn't much better. That means 86% of our eligible population doesn't know they have a choice, doesn't care, or doesn't have access to the ballot box. If you've read this far, you already know how important this fight is. And as writers, we have a democratic duty to use our story-telling skills to inspire our fellow citizens to act.

And if my little story-telling exercise just here has got you fired up at all, I would like to invite you to lend your penmanship to a righteous cause - as Allison Campolo For Texas Senate District 10 and I undertake to print, sign, date, hand-address, fold, seal, and stamp 12,000 real, actual letters, telling her story, to her first 12,000 voters. Because mailers are cheap and easy, and go straight in the trash. Because this campaign is not about taking the easy, traditional, conventional way out. Because being the scrappy grassroots outsider means that your only infinite resources are love and give-a-damn - and y'all, if you have any damns to contribute to the cause, we would LOVE your company.

You know how it feels to see something like this in your mailbox. You KNOW how it feels to realize that someone cared enough to go the trouble of sending you an honest-to-god real letter. If you can help us bring that attention and care to people who have never felt seen, considered, or truly represented before, I believe we can change the whole game. Our first 'write-in happy hour' is this Thursday night. RSVP here, and we promise not to make you lick stamps!

The Happy Human Game

Well, 2017 is officially in the bag, which means my time spreadsheet for the year is all finished. Final count: average 66 hours worked per week for the past year. Highest was 96.5 hours in one week (the Tornado Alley Tour) and the lowest was 41.5 (the week before Thanksgiving, for some reason).
Y’all, I am not proud of that. I spent a whole lot of that time being wired to the moon and miserable, and not following through on promises I made to people I really care about. I AM proud of the things I accomplished in that time (more on that in the next couple of days) – but I do not want to die of stress and fat. 

So I’m going to start doing things differently – and maybe this will be useful for some of you guys too. This year, instead of making resolutions, I made a new spreadsheet. I’m calling it my Happy Human game, since that's what I'm trying to become. I listed all the stuff I want to make a habit of in 2018, and assigned each one a points value. There’s 365 points possible – funny how that worked out – and for January, I want to see if I can get 50 points a day. I’ll see about ratcheting that up to 100 in February if it goes well, and maybe tinker with point values as certain things get easier.

Anyway, if you want to try making your own Happy Human game, you can download mine and mess with it. (Please do change the entries around; the things there are the things I personally tend to struggle with, and I'm sure yours will be different.) Here is the link!

You might also like to check out Habitica, if this kind of thing sounds appealing - it's a similar idea, but rendered as an actual, playable game, and I've heard good things about it.

Regardless: good luck out there, guys. The year won't stay pristine for long, but I've loved seeing all the can-do-itude on my feed today, and I am so looking forward to meeting your bad-ass future-self!