I was reading an exchange a few days ago. It was about guys who stop being friends with girls who won't have sex with them.

I have a few beliefs about friends and associations. Anybody has the right to stop association with another person for any reason. That's the only rule that works. If a woman gives the friends speech to a man, does that then obligate the man to remaining friends? Is he now forced to stay friends? For how long? Under what circumstances?

Of course he's not forced to stay friends, and that's my point. The refusal of an advance does not trigger an obligation. Hoping to keep a man your friend does not guarantee that a man will stay your friend.

I say this as a person who's been dumped many kinds of bad ways and likewise dumped others. They may not have been classy ways, and some of them flat out refused to speak with me any more, and I them, but we each have the same rights of associating with each other. We associate at will. Nothing else is acceptable.

The sex part? Irrelevant. Did you know that players give you five minutes, and if they don't think they're going to get sex, they move on? Yeah, five minutes. Players don't even try to make friends. Many men don't even pretend to being friends, they just go straight to blatantly interested, and if shot down, move on.

As best as I can tell, the type of guys who make friends with girls and work up to asking them out are INTROVERTS. After they get the friends speech, they back way off, as they completely misunderstood the relationship and they can't trust their guts on how to interact with the woman any more. They have to distance themselves. These men, these men who don't have much dating experience, these men who are actually trying to get to know the woman, have somehow gotten labeled as "terrible" for getting their social asses handed to them and slinking away. No, they're just introverts.

I consider renaming my first series. The current books are:

• Weeds Among Stone


• Standing Between Earth and Heaven


• A Greater Genius

They could be:

• The Iron Duke


• The Red Lady


• The White Lady

Or they could be:

• Curse of the Iron Duke


• Soiree of the Red Lady


• Garden of the White Lady

Or they could be:

• Cult of the Iron Duke


• Cult of the Red Lady


• Cult of the White Lady

Any opinionated opinions?

I write fantasy novels. I know I'm on a roll when what I've written parallels reality. Sometimes I hate the same thing. In Standing Between Earth and Heaven, a tornado hit Jura City. This morning, I learned of one that hit Oklahoma City. Reality easily succeeded in being worse.

I shake my fist at the vengeance of the Red Lady.

I handed over A Greater Genius for Jenny to edit. When she's done, it's self-publishing time.

I am considering a change in titles for the series. Something like "Cult of the Iron Duke", or "Forge of the Iron Duke." I don't know which direction I'll take.

Hers Truly has been doing karate and has now earned her jr. yellow belt.

In storytelling, my daughter has turned on the mash-up supercollider. She wanted a MLP-Rio-Angry Birds mashup. Sheesh!

I've been movie watching. I just did X-Men Wolverine and Prometheus this week. Wolverine was a proper popcorn movie. I have no complaints. I got what I expected. Prometheus was pretty, but it sure did get wacky in parts. Noomi Rapace was half the entertainment and quite droolworthy at times.

My Doctor Who theories were wrong, but I still beat out 99% of fandom who ignored the blatant "something new" messaging of the author. I picked up on the important themes but put them together wrong.

Hers Truly somehow go into the Chinese Immersion program in Rockville. She can have a new school next year. 

Miss Dash wanted to watch Star Wars, so we're watching the Star Wars movies together.

In general, she's good with the action sequences, but not with the personal action sequences. They get too scary. She really doesn't like the light saber battles. Ships blowing up? That's OK. The films are a bit too long for her, too, so we have to break them up a bit.

Jenny had been out of town for a few days at Ryan's wedding. She flew back Friday night, a bit delayed by thunderstorms. By the time that she reached the metro station, she nixed the plan of riding the bus home. The sky had decided to deluge at that point, so I wandered over.

While Jenny was away, Miss Dash joined me in bed. I pretty much expected that. The hellion proceeded to claim the middle of the bed every night.

On Saturday, a long time couple got married (all thanks to DC's marriage equality). Congrats to Melanie and Cheryl.

Mother's day was dumplings up in Rockville. They were northern style Chinese and very good.

The new bathroom vanity got a new layer of tung oil. It now has to dry for three or four days.

I've gotten a Kindle paperwhite reader and I've gotten back onto the reading bandwagon. So far the little reader has been working out. I just read through "Summer Falls", which is a very charming Doctor Who book. The writing is competent. Surprisingly, it's not very off my tight style. It read just about as fast, so I think it's cool that there's other books out there as unassuming as mine.

Jenny's off for a few days to Ryan's college graduation. Congrats, Ryan!

In the meantime, I'm playing the single parent game on easy mode. 

It's been budget fu time here with team Milewski. We now know, roughly, what we're spending, so we can add it all up and revise our target numbers. It's never fun, of course, because you come nose-to-nose with reality, yet it must happen. The good news is that we can realistically make all our goals, but the bad news is that we can torpedo ourselves just as easily. So that makes us exceedingly normal.

I just wrapped up a classic Arthurian legend book. Sheesh. The storytelling in that thing was a trainwreck. A knight would ride out, immediately meet a maid, defeat a knight, then spend three days riding back. The lack of time counters i maddening. Even worse is when characters pop out of the air. Sometimes a knight riding out means that knight alone, sometimes his squire is along with him, and sometimes he's leading troops. You are never told which is which.

It's worse with Merlin. The plot device is that Merlin shows up either before or after you are about to make a terrible decision, then tells you about how bad that decision will be. Amazingly, those who get warnings still make their bad decisions. Either way, you never want Merlin showing up.

Our neighbors showed us some edibles in our yard and garden. We have lots of greens and we know the Korean words for them. Some of them appear to be chrysanthamum leaves (but my wife disagrees). We're not sure about the rest.

In a SciFi uniververse like Doctor Who, how would you create a Clara?

It's simple. You find a Clara and make many clones of her in egg form. You then hop in a time machine and make many different women pregnant via techbabble, and TADA, you have many clones of Clara.

Anybody know a character with a time machine, preferably one that admires Clara?