sugar cane and coffee cup

This morning the weather has turned just a bit nasty. It's only 51F out there right now, with a projected high of only 63F, about ten degrees cooler than yesterday's high. And it's cloudy. But. Truthfully, hearing how awfully cold it is at Spooky's parents' place in Rhode Island, I shouldn't complain about 51F. When her mother woke this morning, it was 8F. Ugh. That makes 51F seem positively balmy.

I am taking the day off. The writing went very well yesterday, 1,831 words on "In View of Nothing." I think I finally found my way into the story, and yesterday was the first day I've worked on it that I wasn't left feeling frustrated and depressed afterwards. I will finish it on Saturday, I suspect. But not today. Today, I think Spooky and I are going to see The Host and then meet up with Byron for 300 later on (I was encouraged by curt_holman's reviews of both films in the new Creative Loafing). We might even have dinner, somewhere in there. I am glad to be done with the March, so that my writing may now resume its usual pace, and I may only write too much, as opposed to writing too, too much.

Drinker (the chosen name) ate at least one snail yesterday, so it looks like sheheit is here to stay, at least for now. Sheheit is named for Prof. Edward Drinker Cope, one of the preeminent herpetologists, paleontologists, and ichthyologists of the 19th Century and long a personal hero of mine. Also, there is a genus of Late Jurassic hypsilophodontid dinosaur named Drinker (also in honour of Cope, natch), so I can say sheheit's named for both Cope and the dinosaur genus named for Cope. Spooky just came in with another snail and a slug, a regular Storeria dekayi molluscan buffet!

Congratulations to faustfatale and nathan_long on the occasion of their Scribe Award nominations!

Last night, we watched Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration (2006), a marvelously wry look at Hollywood and hype, and we also watched Ace of Cakes, because Geoff is just so damned cool. And then I read, more of Lewin's Bones of Contention. Soon, I have to set aside the paleoanthropology and get back to my Mars reading, as The Dinosaurs of Mars looms ever larger on the horizon.

Okay. The platypus say if I'm not gonna work today, I have to get off the iBook so sheheit can "surf the web for sizzling monotreme porn." Also, says the platypus, if I'm not gonna write today, doing anything else at my desk is just mocking the poor beast.

But...do please pick up a copy of Daughter of Hounds, if you have not done so already. Thanks!