The Sword Dancer at Saratoga yesterday gives me conflicted feelings about Better Talk Now.  One the one hand, how amazing is it, this old guy, at age 10, making the 51st start of his career, making up 10 lengths in the final 3 furlongs to finish second in a race he won in 2004?  He's still knocking at the door at the very same level he was ( Read more... )

running across some queries I did for CTU in 2006.  How like a child I sounded.  I groan with embarrassment over these old queries now, and over the fact that I put said novel in the hands of someone I knew at the time at a good childrens' press.  Will I feel that way about MTSQ in three years?  I don't think I will.  But it's still part of this ( Read more... )

Transcribing last week's changes to my manuscript.  Immediately found  an obvious missing word on the first page that I had missed on my pass through with the pen, because the sentence had been in place for so long that I was reading it right even though it was written with an inexplicable deletion.  Blarr ( Read more... )

Remember him, the Derby favorite scratched the day of, before you knew Mine That Bird's name?

Now, one doesn't tend to be overly sympathetic to IEAH Stables...  they buy other people's made horses and seem to wheel and deal with a degree of financial sophistication usually associated with investment in companies, not in animals or in sport.  But ( Read more... )

I was just thinking about Icecapade descendants...  I hadn't had it straight in my head that he was one.  I'm glad that Macho Again is racing again this year -- I suppose they needed him to be to pick up this Grade I win.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for grays and think he's elegant as all get-out.

It was a good race, wasn't it?  Charitable Man, Mine That Bird, and Dunkirk all seemed to have a shot at it until Summer Bird came and caught them all.

I'm also really pleased with the Manhattan Handicap - Better Talk Now was making what I believe was the first start of his 10 year-old season, and, if the tally on pedigree query is to be believed ( Read more... )

will still develop your film for under $4 per roll, but they now seem to be doing so at just one lab in Maryland, instead of letting you take your pick of six different ones in Boston, Pittsburgh, etc.  The new mailers also no longer offer the "budget" option of getting 3x5 prints for like 90 cents less ( Read more... )

I sat down this afternoon and read Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy cover-to-cover without getting up.  (More thoughts here.)  It was just what I needed to help me get over my post-big-book letdown (Finishing House of Leaves left me blue.)  Not making much progress with reading criticism and other secondary stuff, but at least I'm reading.

I also spent some ( Read more... )

(the 100-grand supplemental entry fee, that is.)  Rachel Alexandra is going to the Preakness. 

Borel commits to Rachel Alexandra

Meaning that if she goes to the Preakness, as now looks likely, Borel will be, as far as we know, the first Derby-winning jockey in history to change mounts for the Preakness, abandoning his chance at the triple crown.