As my nephew was leaving the house after Hannukah at his grandparents ...

So, last night, Lis's brother brought his two sons over to Lis's parents' house for Hannukkah. They're nine and six years old, I believe, and adorable. Their mother had told them to dress nice for Hannukkah dinner, which the older boy took to mean a nice button-up shirt and slacks, and the six-year-old took to mean a suit.

Some people can just rock a suit, and Jake is one of them. Beige suit, light blue tie, just looked sharp.

Anyway, as the night went on, he loosened his tie (no clip-ons for him! Clip-on ties are only for police officers or other people who might get into fights where they could be a hindrance -- nobody else has an excuse), and took off his jacket. Six years old, remember.

So, on the way out, he was trying to carry his presents and get out to his Dad's car, and also get his jacket back on. He started sliding it on, and I said, "Hey, Jake -- that's inside-out; you may want to do that over."

He looked at me, did a little half-shrug, and said, "Eh."

Maybe you had to be there, but I came close to losing it. It was ADORABLE. It certainly told me that he figured that the way he had his jacket, such that it wouldn't drag on the ground, was good enough for him, and, if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.

We turned up something even cooler than the Vic20...

Okay, we pretty much finished going through the boxes from Lis's parents' attic. I mean, we probably should make another pass through the stuff that we're taking back -- we may yet decide to get rid of some of the stuff that we have, but nonetheless, we've recycled 60% of it, mailed off the Vic 20 and Atari, and only have, like, one box of stuff to take home, of the six or seven boxes we started with.

And we found many nifty things, but one of them was so cool that it makes me love Lis even more.

It's a rejection letter from Asimov's, signed by Gardner Dozois. Form letter, of course, for the sort of thing that is rejected over the transom on the first paragraph. But that doesn't matter. It's a genuine rejection letter, from when she was in middle or high school.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that almost all of us have made up science fiction or fantasy stories. Fewer of us have written them down. Even fewer have shown them to people. Fanfic authors are all in this small group, and deserve kudos for getting that far. Some fanfic is good; more of it is terrible, but even the terrible stuff deserves honor.

But Lis went even further and submitted her stuff to an actual paying market. Now, at the time, she was in middle or high school, and there HAVE been a few people who've been good writers by then, but not a lot. So it was bounced.

I don't care. I love Lis even more for having the guts to submit her work.

Some of you have gotten to the point that you have submitted work, gotten it published, gotten paid, and won awards with it. Lis didn't do THOSE parts. But she did the two hardest parts: put words on paper, and sent that paper to someone who could buy it.