My actual votes for the 2011 Hugo

So here’s the vote I cast yesterday morning for this year’s Hugos. I would feel bad about handing out No Awards, but then I remember what I chore a lot of these stories were.

In which I finally enjoy the Hugo-nominated novellas

What are these novellas doing on this year’s Hugo ballot? I feel like a completely different group of people nominated them. They’re all enjoyable in some way, even if I wouldn’t go so far as to call all them science fiction. One of them isn’t even a proper story. Let’s start there.

I don’t care that squirrels hog the bird food, they’re cute

The summer mob of young birds is emptying the bird feeder within a few hours every day. Most of them are sparrows, fighting with each other, and begging from their parents. There’s a couple of young cardinals, all gawky and splotchy with their adult reds not quite filled in. And there’s at least one young […]

You’ll never see these daylilies again

It’s high summer and the daylilies are flowering. There’s orange ones and yellow ones but mostly these red-throated curly orange ones. Since each flower drops off at the end of the day, you’ll never see these two again. You might see their like, though.

My Hugo reading is getting too close to the deadline, as usual

I like about two-thirds of what I’ve read for the Hugo novellas so far, but that’s because I’ve read — oh, let’s see — just about one and a half of them. Yes, I actually liked something that was nominated for a Hugo, but I’m going to finish my reading before I tell you which […]

Hey, peachie, you dropped something

I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for the peaches and the pears hanging small and round and scentless to ripen. The peaches have been rockhard so long, I even had time to drape some netting over the tree to keep the birds out. (I have no faith that the netting will do anything more […]

In which I lose interest in the Hugo-nominated novelettes

I am really unhappy with the Hugo ballot this year. The novelettes were so bad, I had to delete an f-load of f-bombs from my original notes. Two of the stories I don’t want to finish, one I wish I hadn’t finished, one I finished but have no idea what was going on, and one, only […]

In which I shrug off the Hugo-nominated short stories

I read all the Hugo-nominated short stories, but only because they were short. And they all got a strong reaction out of me. Which is both good and bad.

Getting lucky with Woolcarder bees

The Woolcarder bees still like the snapdragons, but they seem to love a big clump of catnip nearby. Sometimes I see at least four or five at once, too fast and too many to subitize. I love watching the males hovering and darting here and there, making sure there’s plenty of sweet nectar for the […]

In which I confess to watching TV

I finally found a way to get me interested in watching TV — connect a computer to it. Is that so wrong?