A few things of note from the last week or two:

A tradition begins now that we've gone to the Newport Aquarium on Memorial Day weekend two consecutive years. Ximena and I were surprised and disappointed to find the sea horses had ended their stay the aquarium. The fantastic sea dragons were still there though. The octapus was there, but she was sleeping. And what did they replace the sea horses and other fabulous sea life with? Bats! They had Bats at an aquarium! I wasn't that impressed. There were more education displays and videos than actual bats. In fact, we found only one display of bats. Did you know there's a bat that hunts and eats fish? It would be so cool to see video footage of that, but alas, we couldn't find one there.

The bats will stay there awhile I suppose and then they'll get actual sea life. I'm not knocking bats, really. They are quite cool. I was just expecting creatures of the sea.

And what else did we do in Newport on Memorial Day? After some dinner (oysters and clam chowder) we went down on the beach, stood on the hard packed sand and danced a little tango. Hard packed sand isn't the best surface to tango on but we did our best and it was quite lovely and pleasant. We didn't have any music but I hummed a made-up tune.

I went to Kate's workshop yesterday without a story in hand. There were still three stories to read and critique. Johnzo and Victoria came down from Seattle and they brought Victoria's chapbook. Introduction by Ray Vukcevich and cover art by Robin Catesby. I bought a copy of course. And you should buy one, too. Victoria has been published in Polyphony and Rabid Transit. Her stories almost never fail to grab me on an emotional level.

I have been restless with writing inertia and dreaming of writing the next novel because the discipline of writing every day comes easy in the middle of working on a novel.