It only seemed like a long time!

Translation. (Done!)

Invoice. (Done!)

1099s. (Done!)

UI filed and paid for. (Done!)

UPS report. (Done!)

It only felt like it took most of the day. (Actually, I think it did.)

Client said okay with the retranslation. I said I'd be careful with the rest of the document, and squeezed an extra day on the schedule.

Dinner time! (Elk and swiss chard.)

Cheers...

Virginia Heinlein, RIP

I always thought it mildly interesting that in 1990, our family moved from Jacksonville, Florida to Scotts Valley, California, just a few miles down the road from Bonny Doon, where Robert and Virginia Heinlein made their home for many moons. By that time, of course, Robert Heinlein had been dead for two years, but I thought it a curious fact, nonetheless, though I never worked up the curiosity to go driving and find the house that Heinlein had built.

I later found out that Virginia Heinlein had moved away from California, to Florida. To Atlantic Beach, to be precise, which is just down the road a few miles from Jacksonville.

It is there that she died a few days ago, on January 26, at the age of 86.

In the aftermath of her husband's death, she managed to publish four of his works, including the full, uncut version of Stranger in a Strange Land, which had had about 250 pages cut from it back when it was first published, making Heinlein's name a household word, and adding - among other words - the concept of grok to the language. It is on my list of to-read-again books (or, considering the restored 250 pages, my list of to-read books :^).

Of the other posthumous work, I greatly enjoyed Heinlein's Tramp Royale, in which he describes a round-the-world trip back in an era far removed from our own in ways other than simply time.

The obituary for Mrs. Heinlein in the L.A. Times noted the following:

She was the model for many of the superwomen who crop up in her husband's stories, such as Maureen Johnson Smith, the mother of the immortal Lazarus Long in "Time Enough for Love," published in 1973. The female characters tend to have red hair, like Virginia's, as well as great wit and an ability to overcome adversity with aplomb.

Greg Bear, a science fiction writer who knew the Heinleins, said he has met women who were inspired by Robert's stories to become scientists. "And Robert," Bear said, "was inspired by Ginny. Ginny was their original."

Cheers...