I write a lot about the process of actually coding for Quarto, but it's more rare that I talk about the effort that takes place before any code is written. The notebook holds the rest of the story. Not just the story of Quarto, but the story of virtually everything else that has happened in my life in the past year.

The hardback, spiral notebook was part of a birthday gift from friends nearly two years ago. At first brought out only for sporadic scribbling, it eventually began to be used for more than just story ideas.Most of the pages remain undated, but the changing inks and topics give clues to dates. The short notes, scribbled in heavy black ink date from last Christmas, from the last real conversation I had with my father—

"p.1 on left - GM [grandmother] Wilhite's g-pa called 'Doc Bates'"

"—baby next to flowered grave, Edith. Dad says I look like her"

Funny—it doesn't look much different around here, but oh, at last, at last I get to say the words I've been dying and itching and wishing and dreaming of saying for a long, long time now:

Welcome to domesticat.net, powered by Quarto.There is a lot left to be done. A few of my entries were categorized through the usernames I originally used to post them, but those were less than a hundred of the ~640 posts I have archived on this site.

Trust me, it's funnier if you know what's been going on the past 24 hours or so.  The short version is that those of you wanting to jump the gun and position yourself for the goofy madness that is the Quarto unveiling can go to the registration page and sign up to be a registered commenter.

("But, Mom, do we have to?")

Tonight I understood that things were Really Going To Work. As in, were Really Going To Work, in the cosmic, hit-over-the-head fashion that's completely impossible to ignore in the way that things like the success of internal-combustion engines are hard to ignore. True, everyone but me has known that things were Really Going To Work for a good deal of time (and have been waiting on me to see the obvious) but about an hour ago, I finally got it:

From here to central Georgia (and back) is something over four hundred miles. Four hundred miles of alterna-rock radio stations (who don't really seem to remember what they're the alternative to) and trees that stand politely out of the way of the gently-winding interstate.We are eleven days away from dragon*con, and the pie-in-the-sky battle plans are cementing themselves into plans for the weekend after next. Oompa is recovering from brown recluse bites on his legs and can't do much lifting, so Jeremy (our very own rock-steady Mr. Sulu) will be his second-in-command this year.

We sat next to each other on Kat and Sean's slipcovered sofa, in the living room that, over the past week, had begun to exhibit definite signs of habitation by its new owners. We were spread somewhere between the fullness of dinner and the cheerful obnoxiousness that was an evening of gaming with the wondergeeks. He flashed a grin at me and said, "You realize that as of next year, we'll have known each other for over half of our lives?"

I tried to count back without using my fingers, failed, and said, "Has it really been that long?"

"It was the summer of 1990 when we met," he confirmed. Yes, indeed—summer of 1990—before our birthdays, so we would have been square in the midst of the gawky year of 13.

Writers shouldn't be allowed to use phrases like "In the meantime, everything changed," regardless of the amount of truth such a statement might contain. It's too easy of a way to skip over the formative events between then and now, sacrificing story for speed.