A reminder: Scattered, Covered, Smothered is now officially open for submissions. Let the flood of fun foodie fiction begin!

***

A really nice time yesterday with Andreas and Luna. At the Magic Wing exhibit -- a greenhousey structure filled with dozens of exotic and local butterflies -- we took numerous photographs, tried to catch hummingbirds in flight, and in my case, sweated through my shirt. The humidity was somewhere around pea-soup level yesterday, where the sweat couldn't wait to leap out your pores and the simple act of breathing could make you tired. We also looked around the rest of the Museum of Life and Science, and played with all the cool hands-on exhibits. I embarrasingly admit that everyone else had to wait on me as I finished playing with the wind machine that demonstrates the lift of a bird wing and the machine that simulates water current to show how a particular fish swims against the current to stay in place. They also had the rocket engines from one of the original Saturn boosters and the LEM from one of the Apollo missions. Tres chouette.

In addition, they had many animal exhibits: poison dart frogs, barn owls, king snakes, and an entire wing devoted to bugs (my favorite there was probably the rhinocerous beetle). Janet will be posting a gallery of photographs on her website soon. A very neat place, and I recommend it in case you're ever in the Durham area.

They kicked us out of the museum at 5:00, so we drove back over to Cary and had dinner at Crazy Fire, the Mongolian grill very near our apartment. Good food and good conversation. Then back to the apt, where we chatted until 9:00, not realizing the time that was passing. Luna got to sample Janet's cheesecake-making skills (which are excellent). I was really glad I cleaned the apartment. It needed to be done anyway, but having company over was a good kick in the ass.

***

Gwenda points to a great piece in the NY Times: Teller reviewing Penn Jillette's new novel Sock. I saw the book in the store a week or so ago and almost picked it up. I appreciate both Penn and Teller as writers; they're both highly intelligent and have very readable styles. But I've been trying to scale back my book-buying because a) we're running out of shelf space and b) I'm currently out of a job. After reading Teller's review, I may pick it up anyway. It seems to be very much an apostolic novel, where the narrator (in this case, a sock monkey) has a very unique voice but is telling the story about their best friend or someone they look up to; in other words, they are a metaphorical apostle of the person the story is really about. The Great Gatsby is another apostolic novel, as is Fight Club.

I'm really interested in this style, and am in fact trying to write an apostolic short story myself. It's an interesting challenge, making the narrator interesting, even though the story is not really about them.

Now Reading:
The Troika by Stepan Chapman

Stories Out to Publishers:
6

Books Read This Year:
39

Zines/Graphic Novels/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
24