catching up

Crickets are creaking away in the back yard. My son sighs in his sleep (and who knows what sort of night it will be, since he dropped off around 6:30pm -- an occasional habit of his.) What sounded momentarily like thunder turns out to be distant fireworks, though it's hard to tell in this particular geography (hills on three sides and a broad plain to the west) who's doing the celebrating -- Ron suggested the Republicans, but they're piously pausing in their RNC festivities so as to not appear eager to upstage the potential round two disaster in New Orleans. And, St. Paul is well southeast of here. (See today's Digg posting on McCain's hurricane preparedness speech.)

I've updated the site somewhat -- I meant to add a slideshow of the thumbnail images on the right, but won't get to it tonight. I'm still working on pages from "what i did on my summer vacation," and my girl on a bicycle is missing an arm, a leg, two hands and a foot. I hate drawing hands and feet - I can do them well as a detailed object, but the essential graphic gesture of "hand" tends to elude me; so small figures pose a challenge. Bicycle Girl is case in point. ANYWAY, I'm avoiding a variety of tasks by surfing and site-tweaking; my only justification is that I haven't done much of this over the past two weeks. Between the household projects and Texas.

Ah Texas. I could write a few pages on this but I won't, since no one would stay awake for the whole show -- it's more than likely a you-had-to-be-there thing, and maybe a you-had-to-be-ME-there thing. Meanwhile, back in Dallas I imagine my sister is looking at the hurricane landfall projections and anticipating some welcome relief from the heat; pray for those poor souls in N.O., what with the levee repairs 80% behind schedule. I remember packing unused sheets and blankets in a box to send down to the Superdome. Bigger problems by far down there -- though artists are as affected as anyone -- cops, soldiers, grocery store baggers, janitors, clerks, pastors, musicians, builders, waitresses, writers, reporters -- "who will you vote for" being replaced by "are you evacuating?" and "where will we go?" Hopefully they still have all those extra FIMA trailers stored in Florida or wherever they ended up.

Sure enough, it's after midnight and my son is awake. After a snack, he's watching a show. Crazy. But he can't sleep, so we may as well act normal for a while in the hope that this will soon pass.