Sorry to take a while to respond. I've been offline a lot this month.

Spellcheck with mine seems fine, thankfully.

Watch for your subscription with 365. Microsoft is pushing a higher cost version that includes Copilot. Again, you have to search around to get back to the one you signed up for.

I had the same problem. It's icon appeared on the ribbon in a group mendaciously entitled "Assistance" - easy enough to delete. But finding and deleting the bit that had every new doc opening with "Ctrl I or icon to allow CoPilot to help you write" took a bit longer. Bloody Microsoft.

We’ll have to have words with Asimov, Tolkien, GRR Martin, le Guin, Robert Jordan, Barbara Hambly, Lois McMaster Bujold, Patricia A. McKillip, and James Corey, and … and so many, many others in the spec-fic genre and tell them they’ve been doing it wrong.

Every book in the series *should be* complete within itself, should it? No exceptions. Writing bigger stories across more than one volume is a cheap marketing ploy, then? Oh dear.

Staying indoors with an icepack sounds v. wise!

I get that. We each read a book in a slightly different way to every other reader of it, depending on so many things (education, experiences, culture, upbringing etc), so yes: every reading *is* a translation and we all have our individual translators. That allows for a lot of exploring sub-text!

Exactly. Horrible little darlings.

WHAT that means. Dammit.

Lol! Don't forget the sunscreen and your camel.

I'd say she was adorable, but she's a terrier. You know that that means.

and the final pics

More pics

Absolutely no question! I adore it and look for it every year on the TV schedules.

How wonderful that you have that personal link with him! Adds an extra layer of 'rightness', I expect.