Back From the Grave

Sorry about the long absence here...well then again you all didn't need to read any rants about SUVs and Visa-funded carbon offsets did you? I sort of crawled into a hole this spring. I had to put down my five year old multiple titled, nationally ranked, herding/tracking/obedience buddy, DJ, and the six weeks spent watching bone cancer eat him and wondering if I would know when it 'was time' really trashed me. And he told me when it was time, and Annie and Obadiah buried him with me, and I guess I'm back in the world again. At least I have this August 1 deadline for an alternative history mystery and I'm in the middle of it. And my two year old girl Annie figured I needed a sheep dog and has gone from run-around-the-sheep to where-would-you-like-to-put-them-today in a matter of two months and has earned two herding titles. Dogs really do work hard at making you feel better.

And I'm not the only one crawling out of the grave. Ursula Le Guin took a wicked slice at Slate Magazine's pompous assertion that "Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it." ohmygosh! Well, I could not begin to answer that statement even half as well as Ms. Le Guin. Please click over to boingboing and read it for yourself. Make sure you're sitting on a secure chair please. I use an excercise ball as a desk chair and I ended up on my butt on the floor! And I maybe ruptured something laughing... Dangerous lady, Ms. Le Guin, oh yes! Enjoy: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/04/ursula_leguin_rips_i.html