Had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend. We had lots of people through the house as a more-or-less informal housewarming. Thew and Tishalro drove all the way in from Syracuse (!!) and it was fantastic to see them. They're planning on moving back within a year, and we can't wait. Nothing makes a place more liveable than good friends.

Tish described our house as having "Caribbean" colors. While that wasn't our original intent, the reference works, I've decided. The colors are all deep and saturated, boistrous and attention-getting, but not overpowering (at least I hope not). The original inspiration for the house was our neighbors Jeff and Jefferson, who have even more over-the-top colors than we do (A salmon entryway / staircase, highway-sign-green dining room and lipstick-red bedroom). We loved it, but turned the brightness and contrast knobs down a little (hard to believe if you've ever been in our house). We love it, and though it's too much for most people to live with every day, the general consensus is that it's nice to visit, which is exactly what we wanted.

Mike and Dagny came out for the better part of the weekend, and man, it was good to see those guys. They're such positive and wonderful people, and I'm so very lucky to have them in my life. Now we just gotta get Mike done with his movie and the both of them hitched and started building on their EarthShip. Yay!

Virus, Steve and Wendy all dropped by, and we got brief visits from a few Kzoo locals as well. We grilled our way through about fifteen pounds of venison, and even got to have smores. It was a wonderful weekend. I even, thanks to the kind teachings and ministrations of Tish and Dagny, got my garden planted!

It was also an excuse to get our house clean for the first time in months. So now, after all the dishes, bedding and towels have been washed and put away, we're relishing in a temporarily clean and cat-hair-free home. Yeah, that'll last.

In my neighborhood...

In my

Neigh

Bor

Hood...

Thanks, mom, for alla priddy fleurs.

... you have to IM a different coworker to thump on his cubewall and yell at the coworker you're trying to reach to check his IM.

So, that was fast. The nice lady from Animal Control came and got our "cute", "docile", "forlorn" little raccoon, which turned into a snarling ball of fury the second she touched the cage. Boy, am I glad I didn't go anywhere near the trap. Little bastard would have taken off a finger.

The term "fights like a caged animal" is especially true, if anyone's wondering.

He's gone now, and according to the lady from Animal Control, he'll be put down later today. Too many of 'em in the city, and not enough room in the country to support them all. I figured as much.

So we've had a raccoon in our backyard since we moved in. The little bugger is very brazen, and literally climbs up and down our tree while we're standing ten feet away, talking to our neighbors over the fence.

I was perfectly content to live and let live. I had no problem with him roaming the neighborhood with my backyard as a base. That was, until, he started digging up my newly-planted garden. He set back my baby blueberry plant by a couple of weeks; broke off half its branches. He killed my sweet marjoram, thinking for some reason that it alone was the flowerpot with all the grubs in it. The strawberry plants will be coming to fruit within a month or two, and I can just imagine what he'll do to those.

So I went down to the city's Animal Control and rented a live-trap. I brought it home, baited it with peanut butter and promptly caught a very angry squirrel, who, once he was caught, ran in circles on top of the peanut butter and scolded me the whole time I was freeing him. I warned him that if he got caught again I was leaving him in lockdown. I rebaited and reset the trap.

As soon as night fell, sure enough, there was a clatter and we'd caught ourselves a raccoon. He looks a lot smaller than he did on the tree, and I hope we got the right one. It'd be a shame if we just got his accomplice. He's currently in the cage, awaiting pickup by the city, and looking quite forlorn. He's docile and cute and giving me the exact look that should get me to open the door and let him out. Tough luck, plantwrecker.

I'm home today, so I'm going to talk with the officer when they come to get him. I'm hoping they're just going to take him out in the country and let him go somewhere, rather than euthanizing him. He's done nothing really wrong, doesn't appear to be rabid, and deserves to be released rather than put down. Still, I'm sure country residents wouldn't be too keen on getting yet another cast-off garbagepicker from us city folks, and they'll no doubt shoot him or turn dogs on him if they catch him in their gardens. Which is better, a quick death in a scary room or being torn apart by dogs? Either way, not fun.

I'll post tomorrow with the future of li'l mister ringtail.

Why the hell hasn't anyone written a Dune Filk called "I'm Cloning up my own Duncan Idaho"?

I think I'm raising a roomful of Triffids. When I came in to check on the plants last night, I found that one of the cucumbers had wrapped its tendrils firmly around the necks of the nearest two peppers. Strangulation? Turf Wars? Dominance posturing? Or maybe it's just time to freakin' plant the things already.

Saturday we did Free Comic Book Day signing at Fanfare Comics in Kalamazoo, then went out for my birthday dinner with my family. My mom and gram got me tons of beautiful perennials, and today Paul and I planted them.

We totally outfitted the sideyard, too. Paul dug up the weeds from between our paving stones, mowed the yard, and planted pansies in the curb lawn. I got the two hundred pound pile of fieldstone organized into a nice border, planted bleeding heart, irises, stargazer lilies and columbines and levelled the sideyard. Then together we dug and amended the soil in the newly created fence bed for my strawberries, and I got the wee baby plants put in. Whew! The backyard is totally transformed. I want to go nick some more big rocks from my dad's house; he has some really pretty ones about as big as my head, and they make terriffic showpiece rocks. Then we gotta get some pavers put in for the patio, and we'll be set. That'll be expensive and a lot of work, so right now we're pretty well done for the time being, and quite happy with the results.

We also want to get some really cool outdoor sculpture to go on top of the second manhole cover... something welded out of scrap metal, with gears on it, not some sissy-ass gazing ball or bathtub Mary. Unless, maybe it was a bathtub Mary Queen of Scots. Made out of welded scrap metal. With gears on her head. That'd be cool.

Dude, now I know what I'm asking Paul to get me for Christmas.

So our washing machine quit working on Sunday. I came downstairs, expecting to turn over the laundry, but instead I found a soggy mess of clothes and the stench of burned rubber.

We were fervently hoping it was just a broken/burned belt and that we'd get away cheap, but the truth was even weirder. Seems a pair of my underpants got sucked into the hose, preventing the machine from pumping out the water in preparation for the spin cycle, and when it tried to spin on a full load of water, it couldn't take the trauma and shut itself down before it burned itself out. (Smart little washer.)

When the repair guy left yesterday, my one question to him was whether I should switch to boxers.

So yesterday was my birthday, and what a good birthday it was. Got nice calls from the parental units, and Paul and I went out to what's probably my new favorite place to eat in Kalamazoo: Bell's Eccentric Cafe. Cheap good food, fantastic atmosphere. Oh, and the best beers in the entire midwest. We got our dinner and took it out to the beergarden, where we sat on the grass and watched the sun set.

I tried this wonderful apple/honey beer called Cyser (prounounced "Sizer", nyuk, nyuk) that was tart and rich and appley, as though someone had dissolved a handful of Sour Apple Altiods in a glass of Oberon. MmMMMmm. At 9% alcohol, though, it also came with a boxing glove. *Kpow!*

After that, we walked back to O'Duffy's, where it was Session Night, and I got to play with one other flute player for a couple of hours while Paul hung out with two other couples. I wanted to hang with the gang, but if I'd stopped playing -- the session would've been over.

Paul gifted me with a wide array of garden tools -- shovels and rakes and other implements of destruction -- and a lovely framed street-art photo-transfer of himself he had taken while he was in NYC last week. I have very few good photos of my husband, and this one is very good indeed; very flattering and arty and cool. So cool, in fact, that he's probably going to use it for his author photo in his new book.

B&T also gave me some super-neato candle lanterns for the front porch, and we're going to put those up along with some that Paul has, and have a pretty front-porch candlelight supper. Well, as soon as the weather warms up. Paul and I usually eat dinner together on the front porch whenever the weather allows, and the lanterns will be luvverly out there.

So yeah, a most excellent birthday, and the first one (ever) that Paul and I have spent together. Yay for good days.

Nintendo, a Capella.

For those of you who already know what's going on, I present this as my opinion. Wang Lung speaks for me.

For everyone who doesn't know what's going on, it's good literature.

Either way, enjoy.

From Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer winning novel, The Good Earth:

Spring passed and summer passed into harvest and in the hot autumn sun before winter comes Wang Lung sat where his father had sat against the wall. And he thought no more about anything now except his food and his drink and his land. But of his land he thought no more what harvest it would bring or what seed would be planted or of anything except of the land itself, and he stooped sometimes and gathered some of the earth up in his hand and he sat thus and held it in his hand, and it seemed full of life between his fingers. And he was content, holding it thus, and he thought of it fitfully and of his good coffin that was there; and the kind earth waited without haste until he came to it.

His sons were proper enough to him and they came to him every day or at most once in two days, and they sent him delicate food fit for his age, but he liked best to have one stir up meal in hot water and sup it as his father had done.

Sometimes he complained a little of his sons if they came not every day and he said to Pear Blossom, who was always near him, "Well, and what are they so busy about?"

But if Pear Blossom said, "They are in the prime of life and how they have many affairs. Your eldest son has been made an officer in the town among the rich men, and he has a new wife, and your second son is setting up a great grain market for himself, " Wang Lung listened to her, but he could not comprehend all this and he forgot it as soon as he looked out over his land.

But one day he saw clearly for a little while. It was a day on which his two sons had come and after they had greeted him courteously, they went out and they walked about the house on to the land. Now Wang Lung followed them silently, and they stood, and he came up to them slowly, and they did not hear the sound of his footsteps nor the sound of his staff on the soft earth, and Wang Lung heard his second son say in his mincing voice, "This field we will sell and this one, and we will divide the money between us evenly. Your share I will borrow at good interest, for now with the railroad straight through I can ship rice to the sea and I ..."

But the old man heard only these words, "sell the land," and he cried out and he could not keep his voice from breaking and trembling with his anger, "Now, evil, idle sons -- sell the land?" He choked and would have fallen, and they caught him and held him up, and he began to weep.

Then they soothed him and they said, soothing him, "No-- no-- we will never sell the land --"

"It is the end of a family -- when they begin to sell the land," he said brokenly. "Out of the land we came and into it we must go -- and if you will hold your land you can live -- no one can rob you of your land --"

And the old man let his scanty tears dry upon his cheeks and they made salty stains there. And he stooped and took up a handful of the soil and he held it and he muttered, "If you sell the land, it is the end."

And his two sons held him, one on either side, each holding his arm, and he held tight in his hand the warm loose earth. And they soothed him and they said over and over, the eldest son and the second son, "Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold."

But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled.

I was going to say something witty about how I'm feeling marginally better today after a full twelve days of suffering under the Creeping Croupy Evil, but I'll let good old Neil say it for me:

I'm getting better, thanks. ...Taking it very very easy on myself currently, which is a good thing, and was necessary. Sometimes your body tells you it's time to rest. If you ignore it, then sometimes your body whacks you over the back of the head with a hefty iron crowbar, kicks your feet from under you and then, while you're lying on the floor in agony, gets in really close and shouts "Now will you listen?" at you through a megaphone.

So I'm listening.

Wastewater + Bacteria + Electricity = Hydrogen

So who is this John Bolton guy, anyway? And how does he feel about the UN? Via truthout.org.

Green Car Congress.

I caught my husband's creeping crud on Sunday, and by that evening it felt like someone'd taken a belt-sander to my throat. Of course, this illness arrived three days before I was to present before two hundred librarians at a major library conference. Wednesday morning at three am, twelve hours before the presentation, I woke up feeling like someone was trying to pull my molars out with a pair of pliers, while simultaneously ramming cotton balls down my ear canals with a pointy chopstick. My head was threatening to explode, my throat ached, I couldn't swallow and the lymph nodes in my neck hurt so badly I was afraid I had caught Captain Trips.

I staggered down to the 24-hour Walgreens, bought zinc lozenges and a second Pseudofed med to accompany the Claritin I was already taking (you CAN take an anithistimine AND a decongestant simultaneously...) and somehow fell asleep on the couch.

I gave the presentation and had a grand time, sold a bunch of books and was again reminded that I have the best husband in the universe. He drove both ways and kept checking up on me to make sure I had my meds and was okay.

We also got to have dinner with Jef Mallett, the guy who does the comic strip Frazz, and Dave Coverley, the guy who does Speed Bump. The keynote speaker for the evening was one of the 2005 Newberry Honor winners, Gary Schmidt. His book, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy not only won the highest award for children's book, but also the Prinz Honor, a slightly lesser-known award for the best teen book.

Gary was amazing. His keynote speech was jawdropping. You could've heard a pin drop the entire time... we were all stunned. Paul, Jef, Dave and I all felt like utter morons -- we'd been sitting at his table throughout the entire dinner and hadn't said so much as a single word to him. So we immediately all ran out and bought Lizzie and had it autographed. What an amazing guy, an amazing historian.

So today I'm back home, unable to speak. I literally gave my entire voice away yesterday, and when I try to talk, it sounds weak and strangled, and breaks frequently, like a dog's squeaky toy. So I'm giving Dr. Atkins the boot and am baking fresh bread to be my comfort food, and will be reading Lizzie tonight in the bathtub.

What a good day.

buh...uh... duh....

Now, this is a home security system I can get behind.

Michigan is taunting me.

It's been at least 60 degrees Fahrenheit for the last two weeks, clear and sunny and beautiful. I am so so so tempted to start my plants in their brand-new bed. I know as soon as I do, though, that Michigan will rare back and pound them with a root-freezing frost.

So my wee baby seedlings aren't going anywhere till Memorial Day weekend. Tricksey Michigan. We hates you, we does.