Reading: boating magazines
Music: The Poxy Bastards
TV/Movie: Borat (my god..how funny was that!?!?
Link o' the Day: www.stevemartin.com

I'm on fire.

Well, sparking, at least.

I just finished laying out the text and photos for the Hank Moonjean book more ahead of schedule than I had hoped. All that's left before sending the author the proof is to take care of the running headers, footnote pages, and take care of any widows and orphans (a typesetting term).

And I have two loaves of blueberry cornbread baking.

And I've just received materials for the next SFWA Bulletin.

Sparking, yes. On fire.. let's see how the week turns out. I have many projects and a lot more work to do.

But this all comes at the end of fairly relaxing weekend. Saturday wasn't as relaxing as it could have been as we were sweltering through a pre-storm humidity assault. One the rain came and went, though, it was actually quite nice. Sunday Pretty Maggie and I made a visit to The Umbrella Factory--this kind of farm/series of gift shops set in the midst of a New England jungle. Very hippy crunchy, but some neat stuff just the same. I picked up a book of old time recipes and a new plant for the cats to torture.

Later that night I checked out an Irish music session at Ward's Publick House in Warwick. I've heard of it, but have never been. At one point it had a reputation as not being a good place to play at because the number of musicians was limited by the management. Things have changes and they're trying to build up the attendance again. I was invited down because the guy who leads it thought it would be a particularly valuable session for me as a developing musician. He was right. I got to play a lot of tunes I knew and had a blast. I'm learning a couple of new tunes for next week's session. I'm already looking forward to it.

I should also note that both staff and clientele were incredibly welcoming and friendly.

Pretty Maggie and I are considering buying a house in the Warwick area. This would put me even closer. (More on the house-buying thing in fuutre posts.)

Saturday, Pretty Maggie and I made a drop by Michaels as we both got into an artsy craftsy sort of mood. She picked up a bunch of needlepoint and painting projects. Usually I head straight to watercolors, but I've not done much in the past couple of months due to some time and space constraints. (Plus, my work area for that isn't the most comfortable in the summer. I tend to paint more in the winter anyway.) Instead, I picked up some new cartooning supplies.

Skill at cartooning, for me, is like my ability to speak Japanese. So long as I'm practicing on a daily basis, I do fairly well. But if I let it slide for a few months or years, then it's like starting all over. That's what it feels like now. I've never been very good at drawing, but that doesn't stop me from trying. I filled up several pages of the samje cartoon face drawn over and over again. Last night I moved to a body sketch which I'm going to continue drawing over and over again until I think I'm ready for the next step.

So it goes. My goal is to dig up my old gag file and draw some sellable gag cartoons. Something to add to the list of weird things I'll do for a buck.

The bread is done and out of the oven. I'm going to let it cool before I try a piece.

Today's link goes to www.stevemartin.com. A comedian's webpage? A fan page at that? Why not? It's a fun page for Steve fans. If you're not a fan, then go waste some time on Youtube.

Cheers!

--John