Spring Slug Festival

I'm on strike and have barely done a thing for a week (except read, of course). I did manage to play taxi a few times -- I got MJ to and from Hope for Horses twice and ferried her and her cousins to the movies one afternoon -- and Chloe and I had a lovely evening walk the other day. But other than that, taking out the trash once has been my only accomplishment. It's been a pretty good week. I am finally starting to feel bored, though, so maybe I'll get moving tomorrow.

Tidbits:

We received the first installment payment on the boat on time. So far, so good!

Chloe is diligently working her way through the works of Diana Wynne Jones. She was especially taken with "Dark Lord of Derkholm" and its sequel, "Year of the Griffin," and now sees griffins in every cat we meet. (Griffins are called catbirds in the books.)

Frank finished up the latest deadline period for his work, so he's been enjoying the Spring Slug Festival with me a bit.

MJ finished a personal project of hers, rating the 1975 songs in her iTunes collection. She listened to bits of them while she entered her ratings, so we've all been listening to lots of varied music clips. I wish I could describe her amazing collection better. In addition to numerous genres of English-language music from a number of countries, she has songs in Japanese, Romanian, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, and probably others. I'm especially taken with "Malagueña Salerosa" by Chingon (from the Kill Bill soundtrack).

We had a long phone chat with Chiara last weekend. She is doing very well, being quite happy with her independent university life in Milan and new romantic interest, David. We're looking into visiting Italy this summer, but it would be a lot (LOT) of Euros, so I dunno. There's some talk of just sending the girls to her to save money (and provide them with one heck of a fun time, I'm sure), but I would be SO jealous.

It's raining a lot here, but Spring is all around. The cherry trees are doing their glorious thing -- the girls and I want to get to the Quad at the UW and shuffle through the pink "snow" -- and all the other trees are leafing out. Love it. We took Rodney and Lestat out to the front yard yesterday for some fresh air and adventure. They are pretty tentative outside, preferring to peek their noses out from cover (with their favored cover being our legs, shoes, and clothes), but they got into the spirit and seemed to enjoy being plopped downhill so they could run up the hill back to safety. Rodney got cocky in fact, decided he didn't need us any more, and took off for some further exploration. Chloe rounded him up and we called it a day at that point. :-) He's about half Lestat's size but game.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!