I’ve got a late start to the newsletter today because, well, quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Spent the morning going for a walk, playing a bit of Fortnite, and watching television. You know, lazy stuff, because it’s time to be lazy. Here’s a few bullet points of things that you might need to know…

• No, I haven’t seen Spider-Man yet. It came out here a couple of days ago. Harper has forbidden me to see it, so I will be seeing it on Sunday. The film opens in North America Friday (which is when you will be receiving this letter) and Harper has both an exam on Friday and a flight to Abu Dhabi that night. She will be arriving late on Saturday and then we will celebrate her arrival by going to the movie on Sunday. It should be fun, but I have been steadfast in avoiding spoilers, so I will be on a media blackout until then.

• I am most excited to see Matrix: Resurrections next week. I don’t know why. Tracey and I watched the first Matrix the other night and I would venture to say that it still holds up quite well and actually serves as the springboard for most modern movies nowadays. The Wachowskis managed to capture lightning in a bottle with that one (and really haven’t made anything good since then), so we quite enjoyed it. What’s interesting about it, though, is that we started watching Matrix: Revolutions the next night and discovered that we can only handle about 20 minutes of that movie at a time. It’s SO bad. We will force ourselves to watch the whole thing, though. As well as the last one. They almost sullied the legacy of the original. Almost.

• We wanted to see West Side Story, but it’s banned in the UAE because there is a trans-character in it. Small minds sometimes prevail.

• I finished the edit of my Cindy McCloyd novel last week, so I will have yet another book coming out soon. It will be my 20th book. Very exciting.

• My 21st book will be my memoir. I have written 74,000 words so far. It still has a ways to go. It’s mainly about teaching, but more about life as a teacher overseas, not necessarily solely about teaching. I’d be interested to see if anyone else is interested in it.

For those of you who follow Maurice on Instagram, you will soon discover that the 400th comic will be the last one for a while. Yes, I managed to do 400 of those silly things. I will publish the last few before the end of the year and then Maurice will go on hiatus while I figure out where I want to go with him next. Yes, Maurice will continue, but again, I need a bit of a break.