The Average Blogger

Cry Yawn Smash No Words

Work = change and twinges of managerial anxiety.

The Young Prince = ditzy and twinges of parental anxiety.

Home = neglected and twinges of financial anxiety.

Season = too effing much to do and twinges of overbooking anxiety.

By my reckoning, the next time I'll be free to do a proper post with words and insight will be around the time I'm lying on my couch in a Thanksgiving turkey food coma. 

I'll try to give y'all some microwaved appetizers that can pass for dinner fare between then and now. No promises, though.

I Dig Music. I'm on Drugs!

Well, no, not any fun drugs. Not this week, anyway. But I only have two chapters left on the book rewrite -- and I only have two and a half weeks til my parents arrive with a new four-footed family member in tow (which is a whole 'nuther blog post that will be written upon said member's actual arrival,) so perhaps I should be scouting around for some?

One of my projects is to listen to every album on my iPod.  I'm doing it partly because I don't really know what all I've got on there, and partly to look for songs that needs to be redone because they skip, snap, hiss, or ortherwise act like some kind of angry wild animal. 

I've been at this for ten months. I'm almost through the album names starting with G.  There are a lot of Greatest Hits, y'all. 

Ten things I have learned:
1: I can live my whole life never hearing another Kanye West song.  Ditto Prodigy and probably Moby. On the other hand, Emmylou Harris is ethereally amazing and I don't want to live in a world without Steely Dan.
2: Without En Vogue, the Spice Girls don't happen.
3: My kid has a truly gorgeous singing voice and a truly hilarious backseat chairdancing stage presence.
4: Most of the stuff I love best has less to do with true artistic merit and more to do with what was going on with me when I first heard it.
5: There's an art to doing a really good soundtrack, and even greater skill is required to do a really engaging soundtrack.
6: Live recordings are rarely mediocre; they are either phenomenal improvements on the studio versions or they are absolutely dreadful and should never have been sold for money to suckers.
7: Listening to angry music in rush-hour traffic is not cathartic; it just makes me want to smash my car into someone or something that much harder.
8: I can probably find an artist I like in just about every genre. But finding them could require sifting through a lot of stuff I hate, and odds are that I'll wind up liking something only because it's derivative of some other artist I'm already familiar with.
9: Even without sampling, I can now draw direct lines in even more instances where Artist A stole something from Artist B and just changed the words or the chorus or the intent.
10: I have entirely too much music stored in my little handheld device. At this rate, the Young Prince will be in junior high before I've finished listening to everything -- and that's assuming I never buy anything else. I find that a tad unlikely. 

Out of Sorts

Do you ever have days where you feel like you should be getting a lot done, but you've expended so much energy being stressed out and overthinking things that action is out of the question? Yeah, that's me right now. 

The kid's play is driving me nuts. Lots of shuttling for rehearsals, lots of parental involvement that I'm resenting. The latest is that I thought I signed up to put together a program but apparently signed up to sell ads. I HATE THAT SHIT. If I wanted to sell ads, I would not be on the editorial side of my business. I don't think they will kick my kid out if I don't make quota, though.  I'll give it a good faith effort and hope for the best.  Then there's a rehearsal tonight at 6, but a props meeting at 6:30.  Really? We can't just all start at the same time? Thpt.

Even the book is stalled. I'm 5 chapters away from being done with the second rewrite, but I couldn't look at it this weekend.  I was hoping to get back it tonight while the kid was at rehearsal, but no, 6:30 p.m. meeting about props.  Snarl.  Maybe I can work on it pretending to take notes while someone else blathers on about baskets and swords.

I have lots of stuff I should be doing around the house but I can't bring myself to care enough to get up and do them. It's basically been raining for 2 weeks, so doing yard work is a relative non-starter. We did manage to kill a nest of yellowjackets that I had a serious grudge against after getting stung two weekends in a row. A belt on my vacuum broke, so I need to replace that before I can do anything along those lines indoors. I should really clean my basement, but jeez, that involves walking down a whole flight of stairs before I even do any actual work and I need a nap just thinking about it.

Congress was supposed to be gone this week, but no, that couldn't happen, so the Senate is still in and we have to do regular news reporting work on top of our recess project work, which pisses me off. And other stuff's going on that is making me nervous. I'm told all will be explained this week. So glad I did my nails last night; maybe flecks of polish in my teeth will lead me to stress eat and gain 10 lbs instead of chewing my cuticles.

Then there are other personal things bothering me that are none of my business. As such, I can do nothing about them. It's a messy, irrational place, this brain of mine: I tend to be most bothered by things that I can't do anything about, which is of course the absolute biggest waste of time ever, since fretting about things that can't be changed isn't going to change them. Then again, if I did have the power to act, I would probably wind up punching someone in the mouth -- maybe several someones -- so it's just as well I'm hobbled.

But then, see, there's my boys.  NYAB has been plugging along and getting things done. He's taking care of all the must-do stuff that I can't bring myself to look at.  We're all fed and clothed and things are still running on time, no thanks to me at all. And the YP has been stellar. He stayed out of trouble this week. He's having a blast with this play on his end of things; learning a lot about production and about being a member of a team. He got into the gifted program last week -- though what that means is still a little unclear to me. He's reading and asking some relevant questions. He didn't take my initial rebuke well, but he did seem to hear what I said and claims to be doing a better job of writing in class.  I've definitely had to do less thumping on him at home. 

So, yeah, when I'm with them, all the rest sort of melts away and I can't even remember it. I'm lucky. I'm blessed. I wouldn't trade what I've got for anything.

All that agitation and stress will be there later, I'll get back to it. And the sanctum has its weak spots, of course. I'm sure the kid will do something to make me crazy angry, or the hubs will do something I find incomprehensible, and I'll do something completely stupid and irritating to them.  But you know what? That's fine too. I think everyone is giving and getting what they need for us drag the cart over the next hill, and that's what counts.

New This Week:

1: The Young Prince auditioned for a play and got a role. When he came out of rehearsal last night, he was incensed. "I'm a pawn!" he said in outraged tones. "I don't have a part. I'm an understudy." I suspected this was wrong, since understudies usually have some other thing to do in the chorus. He is not an understudy, he is a sidekick. With no lines, so he was still put out, but apparently he does get to be funny, so that was a balm. Since the role is not in the script, I'll be interested to see how this shakes out.

2: I suspect we got gouged on home repairs this week. Check out this racket: Our septic tank pump died. The plumbers told us that we had a pump running on 110 current, and that was entirely too small for the house we have; it should be a 220 pump. (Never mind that we have lived here 8 years with nary a problem.) They refused to put in a new 110.  The electrician who was tasked with replacing the 110 line with a 220 out to the tank told us that our junction box was recalled years ago and he would not put the new line in unless he replaced the entire box. So $5,000 later, we are flat broke, but we can now shower in certainty that sewage won't back into our basement and we can sleep in relative ease knowing that the house won't burn down. Unless we leave the oven on.

3: Work is weird. NYAB is working nights at home, I'm splitting shifts between home and the office, and I am all discombobulated. I have this nagging feeling that any day now I'm going to get an irate email from someone IN ALL CAPS THAT I HAVE MISSED A MEETING AND AM SO TOTALLY FIRED.

4: My house is a mess. That will get fixed this weekend.  Rah. Rewrite on the novel is going fairly well; I'm more than half done. Rah rah. My parents are jumping over assorted hurdles to come visit us and maybe bring us a dog. Rah rah rah, sis boom bah.

5: That's enough, don't you think? All in all, things are pretty good.  Kid's in a play! Plumbing won't explode for at least six more months! Electrician can go to Cabo! Things are humming along! Huzzah!

My friend baldowl shared a barf story on his blog.  It is sad that I have more than one I could share, and sadder that I am not sure I have the nerve to do it. Maybe when I'm done with my other creative writing.

Such Is Life

I wish I had some amazing photos or some beautiful words to share with you after my extended hiatus, but you'll have to make do with average -- and meager -- offerings on both counts.

What we did on our summer vacation:

Played with dogs.

Ditched the kid and celebrated our tenth anniversary with a visit to St. Louis and amaaaaazing seats at a Cards game.

Played with family. This is Totally Awesome Nephew Jude. I asked him how old he was and he said, "My mom says I'm 3."  Atta boy, Jude. Trust but verify.

We went to Hutsonville, where NYAB's dad grew up, just to poke around. Found the gravestones of his grandparents. The YP was much more taken with the park.

After the Midwest, we went east, to the beach.

And the many entertainment venues Chincoteague has to offer.

All in all, a good couple of weeks.

Then it was back to school -- which doesn't really look like much of a change from kindergarten, does it?

I also finished the first draft of my book and am furiously rewriting it now to add texture and depth and threads of continuity and all the other stuff that theoretically make books good. Between that and my day job, it'll probably be another two weeks til you hear from me again.  Maybe. I don't know. Every time I think I'm ready to hang up this blog biz, something comes along and gets me in a mood to post. We'll see.

On Vacation

Off to the Great Midwest -- a visit to my family in Illinois, a stop-off in St. Louis for our anniversary, swinging back by way of JB's family in Indiana.  See y'all in a bit.

Grains of sand, letters on a page.

Another day at the beach this weekend, a greater desire to move there.

Kid begins his third drama camp this week. I must heap praise on Not Your Average Blogger, who rearranged his hours so he could shuttle back and forth to drop off and pick up while I'm buried in Work Stuff this week.

Not losing weight. Ascribing this to the vast amounts of summer junk food I've been thoroughly enjoying.

Not gaining weight. Ascribing this to the adrenaline I expend on writing, cos it sure as hell ain't from exercise.

At the end of next week, we go on vacation. Looking very forward to that. And to more not losing weight.

Proceeding apace on the book. Pondering going on hiatus from all social media until I finish it. On the other hand, everything I read tells me I'm an ass if I do this, because the best way to get an agent/published/attention/any sort of official-type validation is to join writing groups and participate in writing blogs and it's all word of mouth and nepotism and lalalala I hate it. I'm not saying I don't crave feedback and respect criticism. I'm saying I hate the long-established fact that publishing is a lottery/networking gig, and merit is a distant second. 

And I will cop to the fact that while I like people to read my stuff, I am less hot on the quid pro quo, not in small part because I can be highly critical and that is not always well received. I've been in writing groups before. Sometimes they're useful. Sometimes you can find one person in there who's got a good feel for things. But more often I've encountered great big circle-jerks of dangerously fragile egos. Nobody wants to hear anything negative, nobody takes anything to heart -- and of course, nobody has been published. Perhaps I'm just finding the wrong groups. I need a group that can look at a manuscript and say, "yeah, that sucks. Fix that. You'll never get anyone's interest doing this, take it out. OK, done? Here's what you do now." 

The Internet has been great for this because there are now kajillions of writing blogs and find-an-agent blogs and indie/vanity publishing blogs. I can see them, they can't see me. This does nothing to advance my ultimate ambition, of course, but it is easier on my soul for the time being.

Ugh. See what I mean? Ditching social media while I finish my first draft would probably be doing the world a favor.

The beach has spotty Internet access.  And it's too windy and sandy to really do much writing or critiquing. Perhaps that is why I love it there so much.

Ready to Go.

Ahh, August -- when everyone in my neck of the woods takes a deep breath because Congress has recessed, and then passes out from the heat.

The Young Prince is wrapping up his second drama camp.  He got a bigger role in this go-round than last time, which is nice -- last time NeighborGirl and I sat through an hour and a half of mumbling and bad singing (I blame the directors/conselors for this, not the kids,) to hear him say approximately four lines. And I only really heard half of those. This time he is a narrator and has a one scene where he plays someone's .... boyfriend? Boy who's a friend? It's unclear.  Then he starts his third and final drama camp next week, which is off in the hinterlands because I'm a dope who can't read fine print.

I think he's learned a fair amount, not only about acting and singing and whatnot, but I'm hoping this has also been beneficial because he's been stuck in groups of kids all summer, so he's been forced to keep up his ability to function in a group -- as much as he ever had this ability to begin with. He's had to STFU when someone else is talking, and take turns, and I think -- after an altercation yesterday -- something might have finally sunk in about how to deal with different points of view. He got all  bent out of shape because he felt some friend of his cheated in a game, a matter that was the subject of some debate. It seems that rather than shine it on, he opted to quit playing and rid himself of cheaters.  As a result, some other gal called him a baby, and he wound up thwacking her with his script. Surprise, she told on him and denied ever having called him anything. So we discussed:

1: that his friend probably didn't think she had cheated and was probably quite upset when he stomped off, rather than just rolling with it.
2: that girls lie.  DUH.
3: that there are much, much better ways to deal with name-calling than smacking someone, which will only land the smacker in trouble. (Oh, right, this was the 49325832597th discussion of that.)

The reason I'm hopeful that something sank in this time is twofold: First, I got him to admit that part of the reason he got so mad when she called him that was because he knew she was a little bit right; and second, I told him the Winston Churchill story.  (For those of you who don't know -- WC was at a party and Lady Astor sniffed at him, 'Sir, you're drunk.' He replied, 'Yes madam, I am. But in the morning I'll be sober, and you'll still be ugly.')

Well, the kid was all over it. He wasn't sure about the "ugly" part, however. "Maybe I can just say, 'but you'll still be a brat'??" But of course.

So, we shall see.

I am, I think, more than half-done with the first draft of my latest version of optimism triumphing over experience, and I'm hoping to shop it around for publication soon.  Maybe. Perhaps. And all my delusions of grandeur will be validated or roundly mocked  as deserved, I'm sure.

Mostly, we are all just looking forward to vacation.  Beach, Illinois, Indiana, Beach.  Nice set of bookends, that.

 

Play Misty for Me. Wait. Wrong Misty.

We had the best weekend, y'all.

So, it was the 150th anniversary of the Battle of First Manassas out where we live. There's been a billboard up advertising a twin-pack DVD set of Gettysburg and Gods and Generals for weeks. About 17,000 people were expected to show up for the re-enactment slated to take place somewhere not on the actual battlefield proper. Roads were blocked, dudes hauling cannons around on little trailers clogged up the gas stations starting Wednesday afternoon.

You might be thinking we bought tickets and were part of the festivities and taught the Young Prince more about Stonewall Jackson and fifes and drums and what-all.

You'd be wrong. We got the hell out of town.

Honestly, it was over 100 degrees this weekend, and there was no way we were going to sit around outside watching guys in wool suits run around challenging each other with bayonets. And since we weren't going to do that, we certainly weren't going to venture out and sit in all that traffic to do something really exciting like grocery shopping. So we'd already concluded that one of two things would happen: We would stay home and go absolutely insane from being indoors all weekend because it was really too hot to play outside, or we would stay home all weekend, try to play outside, last about 10 minutes and then spend the rest of our time panting on the living room floor from overheating. 

Instead, after the kid's drama camp wrapup performance on Friday afternoon (he had a tiny part; he was a shopkeeper and a prison guard, though he did have actual lines,) we did some laundry, threw together a bunch of items and loaded the car with snacks and towels and chairs. Then we got up at 5 a.m. Saturday and drove 4 hours to Chincoteague. NeighborGirl came with us, which was completely awesome as she 1: serves as another boot on the neck of the YP, and 2: she and I share a worldview that involves raising our eyebrows and making fun of people who are not cursed with self awareness.  Going to the beach at Assateague was good news for us in both regards. We parked our vinyl chairs at the water's edge and proceeded to make fun of everyone whose bathing suit was too small, whose tattoo was too ugly, whose behavior was too slutty or whose pale fishparts were too sunburned at the early-early hour of 11 a.m. Meanwhile, Not Your Average Blogger and the kid flopped around in the surf. The YP also buried himself in the sand a few times, then ran back into the water and rinsed off.  It was great. We just sat and absorbed Vitamin D for about three hours, and then after a few minutes of debate decided we were not going to bop on back home that night; we'd stay over and head home on Sunday instead.

That required a bit of work on our part -- we had to find a room, and probably got the last vacancy on the island, and then we had to go buy clothes that were not full of sand and salt water.  I am pleased to report that my new car did remain fairly sand-free, especially considering what kind of shenanigans the kid was pulling (including somehow suckering NeighborGirl into carrying his filthy self back to the car because the sand was too hot on his feet. I know, she has much to learn.)  After getting lunch and tooling around the island for a bit looking at the scenery and the houses and so on, we checked into our hotel and spent another hour or so in the pool.  We then headed out for a night of entertainment -- we saw Captain America at the very old-fashioned theater and then had dinner at a place called Bill's which was not too bad.  Oddly, the entrees were the worst part of the meal. Soup, salad, sides, all amazing. Prime rib was more "meh, it's ok" rib.

After dinner we drove around a bit more, but it was fairly dark and there wasn't a lot to see. We headed back to our hotel and NYAB and the YP passed out fairly quickly. NG and I didn't last much longer, though we did finish a couple crossword puzzles.

Next morning we got up and had breakfast at the same Bill's as the night before. I took a shot and tried scrapple, and having done so I can safely say I see no need to ever go near the stuff again. The pancakes were pretty good, my omelette was not awful. The grits were pretty runny, though -- more like Malt-O-Meal than mush. I think the YP did not like this establishment, as the only time he showed any truly smackdown-worthy behavior was while we were sitting and waiting to eat.  Perhaps next time we will find a place with waterfront dining and toss him into the water when he acts up. 

After breakfast, we headed out to the lighthouse and climbed it to the top. NG and the kid pounded up there pretty much without stopping. I'm not in good enough shape for that, though I'm better than I might have been a month or two ago. After the lighthouse, we wandered back into town, stopped at the museum and spent way too long locating items in a scavenger hunt. A quick swing by Dairy Queen and it was time to head home, a trip that went fairly quickly and seemed even shorter thanks to NG's excellent taste in downloaded comedy routines.

I wish I could tell you I had photos of all this loveliness, but of course I left my camera at home like a dope.  But even this was a good thing; as it means I'm bound and determined to go back in two weeks and do it all over again! Frankly, I'm ready to buy a house there and spend all my weekends and most vacations there. But I reckon we should maybe spend more than two days there before making that kind of commitment, no?

Feeding the Mind, Taxing the Body

A friend of mine on Facebook posted something the other day -- "If life gets you down, remember you're already a winner: You were the fastest sperm!"

I rather hope that was not my last significant achievement. There are days, however ... 

So, in the past week I have:

-- Written 32 pages of my novel.
-- Edited another chunk of my dad's magnum opus.
-- Read several pages of an extant, published novel without passing out in exhaustion three sentences in at every attempt.
-- Filled out a mulch path that will allow me to get the riding mower from the back yard to the way-back yard. 
-- Lost my son to a bevy of high school girls.

My book is going apace, though I find myself more than occasionally disheartened in the process. I think I'm almost ready to cobble together an outline and send it to someone. (Define ambition: a four-book arc. That's a big outline.) The bigger question is if anyone wants to read it. We read a piece of it to the kid last night and the content may be too old for him. This makes me a little sad and leads me to wonder if I'm doing it wrong, since he's reading at a pretty advanced level. (Of course, it is also possible I picked a bad time and he just really, really wanted to get back to his computer games.) I've loaned it out to NeighborGirl and I'm waiting to hear back on her assessment. Sigh. 

I'm reading my dad's book. The content is interesting, the rewriting is kind of satisfying, and I think he'll find a publisher for it. But (she said, in her best Eeyore voice,) in a way that will be even more demoralizing because I have to believe that there's a bigger market for mutant teenagers with extreme daddy issues than there is for a fairly dry and factual biography of a corrupt robber baron dead and gone lo these many years.

At NeighborGirl's suggestion, I'm also reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It's slow going, and again, if a "thriller" leaning this heavily on Swedish financial history can be a megamovie, why am I so certain my stuff won't win the lottery? 

As a means of purging my angst, I spent a lot of the weekend hacking up tree branches and creating new paths around the property. The tally at this point is as follows:
Top flowerbeds: Gone, with weed killer sprayed in the rocks that are supposedly serving as a way to maintain functionality of the drain under the driveway.
Front flowerbed: Probably 3/4 done. Many rock-lined mulch paths to cut down on weeding; a few more plants need to be stuffed in holes, and I want a patio. I do not want to dig a 4-inch-deep and 12-foot-wide hole to make a patio. I want to pay someone to make my patio. I get tired thinking about the patio.
Side yards: In excellent shape, due in large part to me putting my boot on the kid's neck and making him pull weeds.
Back yard: Path from bridge to steps has had rocks added to it that look quite nice. Path from deck through springtime swampy area to driveway has been widened and edged with tree limbs to replace the rocks I repurposed for the flower bed. It all actually looks sort of planned and classy, not all white-trash junk-yard castoffs and 'well, I had some crap lying around and threw it over here instead of over there.'
Way-back yard: Still just a yard, still needs some help around the fences.

Unfortunately, there are also several dead trees and one extremely large brush pile to be addressed. I do not want to address these either. (See: patio dilemma.)

But, to end on an up note, last week did have a bit of success to it. Those of you who follow this blog with any sort of regularity know that Harry Potter has been a bit of a thing in our house for the past year or so.  The Young Prince was hot to see the movies. I insisted he had to read the books. I kept waiting for him to hit a point where he had no idea what was going on, he couldn't interpret what he was reading, he had no concept of the deeper issues. I think, in all honestly, he did fall short on that last bit, but he followed the plot OK and didn't get alarmed or unduly upset by any of the larger plot points all the way through the end of the seventh book.  So as a reward,  I agreed to allow him to attend the midnight showing of the last movie.

He was fired up to go in costume. Well, thought I, that should be easy. Surely the big chain stores will be all over that idea and have all the old Harry Potter junk out for sale again.

Hahahaha. Riiight. Maybe two days after the midnight premiere. I tried Walmart. I tried Target. I stuck my nose against the (still too early in the morning to be open) window of Spencer's. Zip. Nada.

I went to Party City, and saw an entire wall of Harry Potter tags. With no merchandise. I asked the guy when the merchandise would be out. His oh-so-helpful answer was, "Later." Hmf.  I found another Party City person and asked her if she had graduation gowns or anything of the kind, and when I explained why, she shot a very nasty look in the direction of Later Dude and said, "We've got tons of stuff in the back. Stand right here and I will bring you a costume. For age 8, you said?" God bless Party City Girl. Throw in a pair of John Lennon glasses that I spent 40 minutes working over to pop out the blue lenses, and I was in business.

The YP was appropriately grateful and excited, (though a bit peeved at my assertion that I was dressed up, I was attending as a Muggle,) and we left the house early to get dinner. The crowd we were with included the YP, myself, NeighborGirl, NeighborGirl's roommate from college, and NeighborGirl's friend from grade school, who was decked out in a schoolgirl uniform with a red/gold tie. We arrived at the theater around 8:50. There were already at least 40 people in line. And the YP got a standing ovation when he walked in. He then immediately plopped himself down with the group in front of us in line and proceeded to build himself a whole coterie. I think he would have worked his way up to the dead front of the line if I'd let him. I mean, he had three hours to do it. There was a lot of wand talk involved, and some admiration of Time Turners and Death Eater arm drawings and I don't know what all.

At some later point, he came back to where we were camped out and informed us that You Know Who was in the theater. He seemed to feel a need to do something about this. I asked if he wanted me to take him downstairs and he insisted that no, Gryffindor (NeighborGirl's childhood friend,) needed to go with him.  Fortunately, Gryffindor (whose real name is Meagan -- I think? Megan?) was completely on board with this and off they went. I have no idea what transpired, except that when they came back I was told that there are now probably several photos of my kid floating around out there that I will never see. Heh. 

After 2.75 hours of this, the theater folks opened the doors to the auditorium. We swarmed in, NeighborGirl chose the seats, and we parked ourselves. I was getting the YP settled and debating with him whether he would sit between me and a stranger or between me and NeighborGirl's roommate, when a chorus went up from behind us: "Young Prince!! You have to sit with us!!"  I turned around, and fully six high school girls were looking at him and waving him up to their row. He looked at me. I suppose it is a bad sign that I conceded defeat so easily, but I waved him off.  And off he went, with a "Be right there, Bellatrix!"  to one of the more outlandishly costumed.  I will say that either I got lucky or high school girls have gotten smarter, because he somehow wound up in the seat directly behind mine, as well as in the back row, which meant that I was fully within bounds to stand up and loom over him in the event discipline needed to be enforced without particularly bothering anyone else.  (As it turned out, this was largely unnecessary. There was one incident where he dropped his wand and the light-up end blinded someone, but that was an accident.)

I'm pleased to report that aside from all the Event-ness aspect, I did fully enjoy the movie as well, and it was entirely worth the money, lost sleep and crankiness that overtook me the next day. The boy, of course, wisely slept it off and was back on track for morning hours when drama camp resumed the following Monday.

I do hope the boy enjoyed and remembers it. I think he will. I hope he sees it as a stellar event. I rather saw it as the end of the beginning. Or the beginning of the end. I'm still deciding.

This week is a performance of a different sort. The first of his four drama camps wraps up, and he has two bit roles in their production of the Arabian Nights.  I look forward to seeing it, and I look forward to seeing him read the book; we picked it up from the library Saturday.

Annd, I've come full circle to wondering who will ever read mine. Lalalala.  Off to my own personal salt mine!