little blue men dancing on a pin's head

The new interface is like a new toy. Of course, I realize it's not going to work this way on the other computers we own. Here, it works perfectly. I bet the mac completely freaks out, but the mac is gone until next week. I bet my old dinosaurs Windows machines freak out, since one of them freaks out on the blogger home page. But, for now, I am firmly in the court of, Cool, new toys.

Getting ready to drive back home, from my folks' (which is closer to the SycHill retreat than we usually are, so we came here first--plus they are loaning me a car for the week), for a nice lazy evening of house cleaning (petit) and watching HBO. Hey, I'm unapologetic about my devotion to almost every original HBO show, except of course, Arliss (unfathomable how that stays on, really). The best things about being addicted to HBO shows is that it doesn't matter if you miss them because they run a bazillion times on the bazillion HBO channels so it's easy to catch up, if you do manage to actually miss one they put the seasons on DVD fairly quickly, and hey, no commercials. I'm really looking forward to Carnivale in the fall, not least because I found out it has Clea Duvall in it, who is too talented for the stuff she's been in so far. I was very impressed to see in EW that she knows the proper definition of a giant. These things are important, especially if you're going to be on a circus show.

Anyway. I worked on the book for a little bit today, and will do more before the TV watching. Painted a hideously ugly crow with my nephews, while they made cool stuff like "Antenna Machines" (the Antenna Machine is a pie-shaped styrofoam device, painted many hues, with felt pipe cleaners sticking out at many angles with eyes googling at their ends--if you activate it, it turns into a bumblebee head, I've been told) and some kind of performance art involving fuzzy balls and glasses with various degrees of water in them. (I call that one "Some Glasses Are Half Full, Some Half Empty.)

And I managed to sneak in a nap.

The past few days here have been the kind of weather that tricks you and makes you think, "Ah, summer," forgetting completely what actual summer will feel like with its flamboyant humidity and skies too hot for the cumulous.

Oh well.

A p.s. Congratulations to the fabulous and brilliant Michaelangelo Matos on his fabulous new job at which he will be brilliant. Nothing so good as leaving and coming back King.