oh my gosh...

It's SNOWING!!!

***

The other day, I went to this amazing Chinese restaurant called the China King, which has the biggest buffet ever, and you get unlimited trips to the buffet for five dollars. Jennie and I have been there several times (she took me there for lunch my last day at work before Christmas), because there's nothing Jennie likes better than lots of inexpensive, good food.

At the end of the meal, of course, the waiter brought us fortune cookies. I wouldn't say that I'm superstitious, exactly, but I am always on the lookout for signs. Eager to see what the universe had to tell me, I cracked open my cookie.

This was my fortune:
Aunque sea un pequeno regalo significa tanto para alguien hoy.

I stared at it in disbelief. My fortune's in Spanish??

As best I can translate, it means Though it will be a small gift, it will mean a great deal to someone today. Er, or something like that. My Spanish is pretty rusty.

***

So I had this dream in which I gave birth to my second child. I named him Nathan Peter, and he was dark brown (and a little fuzzy). My first child was named Basil, and he was light-colored. Note that my mother's dog is named Basil, and he came first in our family, and my dog, while not named Nathan Peter, is dark brown and fuzzy, and he came second. This makes me think that my unconscious mind confuses babies and puppies.

Anyhow, so I had these babies (puppies) and I took them shopping. At the store, I was carded, and for the life of me I could not get my driver's license out of my wallet. After much struggle, I finally gave the checker my credit card as ID and left. When I got home, I was unloading my truck, and couldn't find my babies (puppies). Note that I expected them to be in the uncovered bed of my truck. I couldn't figure out if I had left them at the store, or if they had blown out of my truck while I was driving.


Moral of the story: Molly Backes is not allowed to have children!

***

I talked to Ila yesterday! As talking to anyone from home does, it made me both happy and sad. Happy, because it's so great to catch up with my far-away friends! And sad, because I wish I were closer, especially when my far-away friends are going through a rough time of it.

Hats off to Ila Grace Gates-Thomas, who is great and who has a pretty live journal about muppets!

***

Kevin just finished his first real collaboration with Zander Cannon (Zander wrote, Kevin drew), called The Mustache and Topcoat Club. Zander is a Grinnell College alum who's also a cartoonist, who also lives in Minneapolis, and who also has a studio in the Handicraft Guild building, but who isn't (strangely enough) related to Kevin.

Several years ago, Kevin had an internship as Zander's assistant, and was able to sneak a few secret messages into Zander's book (with Alan Moore) Smax.

***

In other news, if the classicists just marketed The Metamorphoses as the Days of Our Lives of Ancient Rome, I bet a lot more kids would go for it. Seriously, the plot twists are weirder and the characters more impulsive and insane than the soaps could even dream. Days, for example, has never had a character be cursed with never-ending hunger so that he was forced to eat his way through his fortune, then sell his daughter into slavery to buy more food, and finally eat his own flesh.

***


You know the scene in movies where through a series of hijinks (usually but not always involving clueless people, like dads or kids, being left in charge of the house while mom's away) suddenly the washing machine or dishwasher goes crazy and starts spewing huge mountains of soap suds and water all over the room, eventually filling the entire room with bubbles?








Yeah, well. Apparently that really happens.