I’ve been taking a little break ever since my grandmother passed away a week ago. She had been slowly winding down for the past year and by early February we knew it would be soon. She was eighty-eight, she’d lived a long life, and she’d stayed around long enough to vote against Bush in the last election. I will miss her like crazy.

The memorial service was on Sunday, and now I’m trying to get caught up at work after an extended personal leave/holiday weekend. I’m fine, but for now I’d rather keep a low profile, which is why I’m temporarily disabling the comment feature. I’m just giving myself some much-needed quiet time. Thanks.

(Edited to add: Please do not leave comments for this entry.)

Hey! Instead of spending money on waxy, musty-tasting Walgreen’s candy today, you should give a few bucks to The Book Thing in Baltimore, an organization that gives away free books. To anyone. For free. They have a chance to move out of the cruddy basement space shown in this article to a better space, but unless they can raise the money for the down payment, they’ll lose their lease on the old (cruddy) space and PERISH. Read The Old Hag’s post for more info and click here to just give.

There’s been some family-related business to tend to lately, so not only have I been light on posting, I wasn’t able to make cynical theme Valentines the way I’ve done in the past. However, I did have a little time this morning to steal some source code and put up this. You are encouraged to report your scores in the comments. Please send a sexy photo if your score is over 80%. Thank you.

This new boot camp class is three days a week for the next six weeks. I go on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays I am overcome with a kind of fitness amnesia in which I somehow forget that there was ever physical suffering or sorrow or those weird calisthenic exercises that involve jumping up from a squatting position and then squatting down again and kicking your legs out behind you like you�re some kind of fleshy lounge chair. I suppose I could continue to discuss how much that sucks, but I won�t, because just now, when I tried to find a helpful image to show you what that particular horrible exercise looks like, I discovered instead that “calisthenics” is the best Google Image search word ever. You could spend hours looking at pictures like this and this, and you can even leave SafeSearch off (which you wouldn’t think would be the case, considering, and which you might find either a disappointment or a relief, considering) and still get amazing results. It’s the kind of Google image search that makes you see the whole world working in some kind of uncanny synchronization of action and purpose; you see kids do calisthenics and grown-ups do them, too; red-blooded soldiers and Chinese do them; cats dressed as people do them and people dressed as bats do them, by God! And, best of all, image-searching on the word “calisthenics” leads you to this page. It makes me wonder: would I enjoy my boot camp class more if we all got to dress up as pirates or Pierrot dolls or steam trains? Hmm. See, this is how I forget the pain.

In other news, my friend Michael in North Carolina got his gall bladder out yesterday and I am very jealous our friend Rebecky got to see the gallstones. If you go read her entry, you’ll find a link to other pictures where you can see that Michael is pretty on the inside, too.

I’ve been taking a break this week, for no good reason other than I just felt like it. Boot Camp Two (aka Return of the Boot or Dawn of the Boot or A Very Booty Sequel or, inevitably, Electric Bootaloo) doesn’t start until NEXT week, and I hadn’t figured that out until Friday evening while out drinking. The epiphany was met with relief and more drinking.

Hey, here’s two ways of talking about your blog-related book deal: this and this. And I mean no shit-starting by linking either of those. Just so that’s clear. And if there’s any shit to be had I am sure it can be cleared up by, you know, drinking.

Also, I’ve had lots to do at my day job, and if you happen to know what I do for a living (like maybe you’ve read about it somewhere recently) you do know not to email me here at my personal website for anything having to do with to the wonderful world of children’s books, RIGHT? Not that any of you have. You’ve been very respectful of my personal blogspace and my nutty extra-curricular grown-up book activities. I say “grown-up book” because every now and then when I’ve told people I know through work about INTNM, I’ve called it an adult book. And that just sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

I’ll write more about Boot Camp soon. I’m trying to decide whether I should disclose the fact that when I did the two week intensive class, I got Special Applause sometimes. I am extremely slow, you see. I confess to having slightly mixed feelings about the Special Applause. But that’s for another time.