a bit sore, but okayToday will be more unpacking, the very last day I can spare for this, as there is simply too much unwritten that must be written by the end of June, or before — two more chapters of The Red Tree, that review for Publisher's Weekly, the prolegomena for Sirenia Digest #31 (which will be unusually long, I think). Oh, and line edits for "Unter den Augen des Mondes" and "The Melusine (1898)." So, no more boxes after today. None. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Spooky's mom is driving up today and we're carting a couple of car and van loads of manuscripts and eBay stock to our storage unit. There are so many things I'd hoped to have room for here that I simply do not.
Most of the bruises (from moving) healed last week while I was writing and hiding from the heatwave. This morning, I have a whole new batch. Spooky and I should lie in bed and play connect the dots with a black Sharpie and one another's bruises.
Elsewise, yesterday, well...I mentioned the bath. I started reading Nicholas Fraser's Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Life in the Triassic (illustrated by the incomparable Douglas Henderson), which was a birthday gift this year from...someone (the Amazon thingies are still packed somewhere, sorry). Ah, the Triassic. My second favorite period, after the Cretaceous. I only made it as far as the first part of Chapter One, but I see this is going to be a wonderful book. I've never been able to do much fieldwork in Triassic deposits. Back in 1993, I actually was awarded a summer's internship as a paleontologist at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona (which includes the Triassic Chinle Formation), but my doctor said I was not healthy enough to accept it, so I didn't. That will always stand as one of the great disappointments of my life. In 1996, I did some collecting in the Triassic of North Carolina, but the most interesting thing I found was a phytosaur tooth in an old brick quarry near Chapel Hill. And now, I am in New England, and there are Triassic rocks strung out through Connecticut and Massachusetts (part of the Newark Supergroup, just like the rocks in NC), just to the west and north of me. Those great flame-coloured cliffs above New Haven, for example. But I digress...
Spooky made spaghetti for dinner last night, and we'd excavated the kitchen enough that we could actually sit at the little fold-out kitchen table. There were also artichoke hearts. We drove about a bit very late to escape the heat of the house. It's quite cool today, after rain and a cold front, only 58F and cloudy at the moment. And to think we had a heat index over 100F last week. Amazing.
And I was...distracted...for a bit by a marvelous Russian artist that acephale linked to. Just follow this link, but be warned. This is like Sirenia Digest for the eyeballs. I could write a story for every photograph. Max Sauco is definitely on my short list of artists to be profiled for the digest.
Of course, the "cephaloflap" and "doodleflap" auctions continue apace. Please bid, if you can. Thank you.
And now I should go. There is cardboard with my name on it...literally.