To clarify: Spring is not getting redone; Spring is wonderful.

I'm Back

...from France, and from new-apartment craziness, et cetera. I am now sort of settled in Florence (not the Italian one. The one next to Easthampton) in a funky place with a huge, great kitchen and two fabulous roommates (although I'm not sure where Adam is; I haven't seen him in days) and a currently impaired bathroom. It's getting redone, which is wonderful.

And so is Spring, which has finally arrived.

95 hours, 34 minutes till plane leaves for France. Whooooeeee!

Come to a Night of Appreciation, Emulation, Infiltration, Obfuscation and Literary Discussion

Think of a British Christian version of the Superfriends, and you've got a--well, a not entirely accurate idea of the Inklings. JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Charles Williams, and their friends used to meet, semi-weekly, at a pub in Oxford called the Eagle and Child, where they'd read bits from their works in progress, drink beer, and talk about everything in the world. This upcoming Tuesday, there will be a gathering at Packards in their honor. RSVP to akascriptores@gmail.com, or just show up. Everyone welcome.

Topics to be covered may (or may not) include:

Aquinas, Beekeeping, Chesterton, Distributism, Elves, the Fall of Man, Grace, Homebrewing, Irenaeus, Jacobitism, Kant, Lions, Mythopoeia, Natural Law, Organic Farming, the Person from Porlock, Quixotic Enterprises, the Romance of Lost Causes, Sherbet, the Trivium, Unusually Good Coffee, Virtue, Walter Scott, the X-Men, Yentas, and Zoological Gardens

Tuesday, February 13, 7:30 p.m.
Packard’s
(in the back room called the Library)
Masonic Street, Northampton, Massachusetts

This Event Brought To You By
AKA Scriptores
www.akascriptores.com

Yup

Leslie wrote (in his comment below) about "..how we used to argue about whether the Metric or Customary was better"

That is exactly what I'm talking about! Another example: in, um, three weeks I'll be going to France for a fortnight (score one use of the word "fortnight"), and I'll be using Euros! Feh. J'aime le franc. J'aime also les dodgy currency changing booths around every European train station when I was Eurailing it in 1998, and it's so sad that they're not needed anymore.

Small, local, old, and particular are almost always better than big, global, new, and abstract.

-- Rod Dreher

Classic Melodie Foster Quote

"I love cake! It's my favorite texture!"

Theoretically. And I'm not saying that's all there is to it. But water is good!

A well-hydrated writer is a productive writer.

more cat

so there are just enormous numbers of kittens in my life now. There's the one at home. Then there's Hermione, who is on my lap lounging over my right arm as I type this, and Ron, who climbed up my back and as I was starting this post. (Now he's crouched next to me and Hermione is trying to use my mouse pad, or something.) And then of course there are Deacon Chapin and Betsey Ross, who belong to my dad and are making him and Barbara act very extreme and kitten-centric...What is this? Are there certain seasons in one's life when it's Kitten Time?

cat

Our household has a new member. His name (for reasons that are a little unclear to me...for which read, It was Rachel W's idea) is Todd-Joplin Sebastien Henry. This sounds to me like a name late-80's yuppies would have given their kid. He is about nine inches high and fifteen inches long, not including the tail. He's also very quick, and has escape artist skills.

He has already tried to fall into the toilet once. We feel that this is behavior that he will grow out of.

so this baby walks into a coffeehouse...

at woodstar last night I ran into Miles (aged, I think, 11 months) and his parents (miles was attached to his father's ventral side with a snugli.) His parents and I say hello and chat for a minute, and then everyone kind of looks at Miles, to include him in the socializing, and there's this tiny pause, and he tips his sippy cup towards me, offering me some of his juice. The body language was unmistakable-- like he was thinking "man, if my parents aren't going to offer this chick anything to drink I guess I should." "I'm all set, but thanks," I said, and his father said (something like) "I think she's good, honey."

How polite these children are. And Ella's downstairs now getting her picture taken...

ALL RIGHT

Here, fabulously, is the Scriptores site, up and running. Soon it will have subpages, and links out, and Aaron's Zombie Bronte poem, and possibly an Upcoming Pioneer Valley Christian Geek Events Listing of some sort. Thanks, girls!

So I somehow stayed up till like 2:30 last night reading this vampire novel...

and here's my thought: if there were actually vampires, I bet a major social/psychological problem within the vampire community would be procrastination. It would be like the ultimate extension of that phenomenon where it's harder to get stuff done, even stuff you want to do, when you haven't got a job to go to. Think about your typical vampire: he's unemployed, he has no deadlines (so to speak)...other than a couple of self-directed Martha Stewart/Type A vampires, as uncommon in the vampire world as in the human world, who would actually be the ones to get around to organizing world conspiracies, you'd basically have a batch of people with none of that sense of the ticking biological clock that gets so many of us to actually get around to writing books and so forth. I bet they would be major slackers.

You know?

Melodie, on the couch next to me, just said the following sentence:

"Ooh. Soul patches are such a bad idea, Brian Boitano."

Also see this article. Happy New Year, people.

good to know.

An Employer Must Compensate Employees For Time Spent Donning And Doffing Protective Gear But Not For Pre-Donning Waiting Time

--title of an article on a legal information website.

When Napoleon

and Tsar Alexander I met up in Tilsit in 1807 to discuss the potential alliance of their two nations, they ended up (according to Napoleon's valet) spending a long time discussing cures for baldness.

I'm just saying.

Can I quote a friend's blog on my blog? or is that too digitally derivative?

This is from Rachel's blog, and I liked it so much that I didn't want to just link to it. Also her layout made me think that it was like something Don Marquis' archy would have written, if he had been an Evangelical.

saying "I'm spiritual but not religious"

to me
is like

being thirsty but not getting something to drink

best quote of the weekend. Had heavy competition, too.

Me: Oh, you know what? Major Winters wrote an actual autobiography that just came out.

Miss F (gasps): Is it called "I'm So Swoony"?

FYI here is the book.

I woke up Tuesday morning and started laughing before I got out of bed, remembering this.

when you come across a sentence like this in life it must be shared.

Developed by the Graffiti Research Lab a division of the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab, LED Throwies are an inexpensive way to add color to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighborhood.

from notmartha.com