How to Waste a Perfectly Good Afternoon

First, call the auto shop that was originally supposed to fix your car before the insurance company declared it a Total Loss. Ask them if they boxed up all the personal items in your trunk before the insurance company towed it off to the Insurance Auto Auction yard. Believe them when they say, oops, we forgot, all your stuff is still in your car and it's now way the heck up in Gardena.

A few weeks later (your first opportunity to drive all the way to Gardena), battle traffic getting to the yard and when you arrive, ask the IAA folks if you can get into your car to clean out your personal stuff. Believe them when they say, sure, we'll have a forklift bring it over, it should only take about five minutes.

A half hour later, when the forklift drops your old car in front of you, open it up to discover the inside completely clean, no personal items in sight. Leave, scratching your head.

Battle traffic again, this time rush-hour. Stop at the auto shop that originally told you they'd forgotten to box up your stuff. Ask them about it and drop your head in defeat when they tell you, oops, maybe we did box it up after all, it's been waiting here all along in Long Beach and we were about to throw it away.

*Growl*
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Cast your eyes to the right and you might see something a little different from the norm. Blogger.com has upgraded their free service, so now I can list all of my weekly blogger archives right on the main page, here. This pleases me to no end. Now, if anyone is bored enough to relive my Jay Leno appearance or the day I battled the devil in my kitchen or Carey's and my traveling-west adventures... now you can click right to it (provided you remember the dates, I guess). Big fun!

Also, I'm very pleased that I can now title my blogs and sort them thusly (note that this entry has a title). Just one more chance to be clever, that's all I'm after.
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You might have noticed the recommended reading on my homepage, The Ring of the Nibelung, adapted by P. Craig Russell. I've been a fan of Russell's work for a long time now and I recently heard an NPR interview with him, promoting an upcoming project of his with writer Neil Gaiman.

Anyhow, I went to his website and posted a message saying how much I enjoyed the interview on the message board there. A couple of days later, he replied:

Hey, thanks for the kind words. Just visited your site and enjoyed the design section in particular. Call me nuts, but page two of Jive Turkey cracked me up. Don't know why...was it just the mood I was in? Lot of nice design work going on there in that section.

(p.s. That little puppy, The Ring Of the Nibelung, took me almost five years, not two, to complete. I WISH I could do 200 pages a year).

-P. Craig Russell

I guess some days start out kind of crappy, what with having to drive back and forth to Gardena for no reason... but, you just never know when you might get home to discover a famous artist you've adored since high school has visited your website and likes your stuff.

Hah.

(Oh, and the 'five year' thing is in reference to a mistake I made in my review of his Nibelung books. It's since been corrected.)

Anyhow, thanks Craig. Truly, you've made my day.