... and then I'm outta here. I've been using this great weather here this week to get myself super distracted from work. Funny thing about books: they don't write -- or edit -- themselves. Alas. Today is going to be another gorgeous day. We'll see what I can do about keeping my ass planted in this chair!!

We did finally see The Last Station last evening. I really enjoyed it but wow, what an unpleasant story. Not an unpleasant movie, just the story itself - which was a true story. But I do love that period of Russian history. Well, to be honest, I love all periods in Russian history! Russia fascinates me. All those crazy Ivan the Terribles and Catherines & Peters the Greats, etc. I particularly love studying the Romanovs. Probably the era from Czar Nicholas II thru Stalin fascinates me most.

A quick thing about my biological father... he and I were very similar in so many offbeat ways. Aside from neither one of us liking to be out among people (my father preferred to stay in his trailer alone. Once he'd retired from the Navy and when he wasn't hanging out in the American Legion Hall drinking, he liked to sit at his kitchen table and stare out the window at the desert and smoke cigarettes, drink beer, not answer the phone. He could do this for hours, day after day. I have my own version of that same scenario.)

Anyway. As adults, we both loved watching cartoons. Totally mindless, empty cartoons. We could both watch them for hours (I still can; he can't, b/c he's dead now.). But on the flip side of that, we were also both very intelligent. And even though he was a high-school drop-out, we were both very well-read and interested in all kinds of unexpectedly similar things. One winter day when I was staying with him in his trailer in Nevada, he had to go out and help a friend do some sort of construction thing at his home, so I was going to be alone in the trailer all afternoon. My dad said, "Here, you might enjoy watching this today. It's very interesting." And it was a documentary about both Ivans the Terrible. And it was very interesting, in fact.

You know, it was during that same trip that the first Iraq War, Desert Storm, broke out and one evening, while I was sitting there, staring at the gruesome shit on the TV and my dad was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking and drinking and staring at me, I saw my very first preview for the movie, Edward Scissorhands. I will never, ever forget that moment. It seemed like such an unusual movie; so bright and colorful and strange. And it really broke through all that hideous war shit and sent a thrill right through me. The preview lasted maybe 10 seconds and was gone. I turned to my dad and said, "Did you just see that? That looked amazing." The movie was already out in theaters but this was the first I was hearing about it. And I couldn't wait to see it. In fact, pretty much the minute I got back to New York, I went and saw it at the Zeigfeld.

Okay. So much for my "quick howdy." The sun is coming up here now and I've got two robins mating right outside my office windows. That's pretty interesting, too, folks. I've never seen robins mate before. It's quite a lively affair. She doesn't seem to be that wildly into it, but at the same time, she's not going anywhere, either. ha ha. Okay. I really, really, really gotta get crackin' around here, gang. Thanks for visiting! I hope things are going splendidly for you wherever you are, and if things aren't so splendid, I'll pray for you, baby, and hope the torture stops soon!! See ya!

(Baby robins! I can predict the future!)