Verified! A Play in One Acct.

I can hardly even believe this happened!

For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, that little blue checkmark next to my name is the coveted VERIFIED badge, confirming that “an account of public interest is authentic.”

My account is of public interest! And I’m authentic! What a day to be alive!

I’m especially amused that this happened while I’m on hiatus from social media — I had to learn about this from official Twitter email. But it didn’t just happen out of the blue; I applied for it a few weeks ago after learning that Verified accounts get an option for “quality” filters that allow them to filter out notifications from, for instance, harassing jerk-buckets. It’s the sort of thing that I hope will be rolled out more generally, since clearly we have the technology, etc, but in the meantime I’m chuffed to know I have more than Mute and Block at my disposal when the festering pus-pots of the internet start burbling.

I look forward to exploring the change once I’m back from hiatus (in two weeks!). Until then, here’s a smattering of news that’s fit to print:

• August 22nd was the one-year anniversary of my wedding. I’ve been married for a year! Stu and I celebrated by watching an episode of Frasier about divorce! As one does. Many thanks to everyone who congratulated me when I could barely see straight for busy-ness.
• I finished reading Ken Liu’s Wall of Storms today. I’m reviewing it for NPR so will hold off on getting into it here too much, but allow me to state for the record that it’s both a) entirely satisfying and accessible as a stand-alone novel, which astounded me, and b) an order of magnitude more gripping, delightful and heart-breaking than Grace of Kings, which is saying something.
• I put the very first item of furniture into my new apartment yesterday! There may not be bed, kitchen table or couch yet, but there is now… A beanbag. And an office chair! Praise me as is my due. (Hopefully the moving of the bigger items will happen this weekend.)
• Yesterday I walked from the ByWard Market a ways into Hull, and it was beautiful. I stopped on the Alexandra bridge, looked out at my city, and thought about how lovely it would be to walk around it like this regularly. (It would be the saddest of ironies if, in walking for an hour and a half in sandals with a backpack on, I managed to give myself a stress fracture right before moving into the city, so here’s hoping that’s not what the pain in my left foot is.)

And finally — the season’s turning. A few days ago I could smell, not autumn, but the end of summer, which is its own distinct smell; the geese have been steadily returning to the river, flying low enough overhead that I can hear the almost mechanical creak of their beating wings; and today, I looked out the window just in time to see this burst of colour falling from the green of a tree.