An Inauspicious Start To The Week

Both Sunday and Monday were busy, but for different and almost completely opposing reasons.

Sunday I went up to the U-District to work at the Suzzalo Library alongside the Monkey King. Suzzalo has this huge, Hogwartsian reading room which reminds me very much of the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittburgh, but with better lighting. I completed a short story in this quiet place without an Internet link, and when we took a break, I learned of the strangeness that is bubble tea at a local coffee shop.

Then I, the Monkey King, Shelly, and Frabjous Dave went to the Circus. Well, actually we went to The Circus, the 1928 classic silent film that got Charlie Chaplin an Oscar. This played to a packed house at the Neptune, as this was the film every SIFF (Seattle International Film Festival) fan wanted to see. And it was brilliant and great and the entire house was completely under a spell cast almost eighty years earlier. Amazing stuff.

Then we adjourned to the Big Time Pizza for slabs of 'za and beer, including a Triple Boch that left me partially phased with another, cotangent plane of existence. And that was OK, since I also discovered that the Frabjous One was a serious Shakespeare conspiracist, and he put forward the best argument that Edward DeVeres authored the Cannon that I have ever heard in a bar while I was partially fused to another plane.

And so I returned home late and happy, only to discover that a tree had fallen on my house in my absence.

It was not a major disaster. We have a stand of maples near the northwest corner of the house - some living, some deadfalls (and "Deadfall Maples" is a great name for a band, if you looking for one - just remember to send me a check for its use). With the neighbor two houses to the west leveling his forest out front, the maples are now getting a lot more wind, so it was only a matter of time before one came down. It bounced off the house, tearing a shingle and bending a gutter, then bounced off the balcony railing, taking out a window box, then plummeted to earth, destroying a flower pot, bending a pink flamingo, and missing the patio furniture by about a foot. So really, there was little damage that we've found.

However, we have a big tree in the backyard, and I spent the bulk of the day sawing up what I could and collecting and disposing of the branches. I still have a huge log in the backyard, but I have to get a bigger chainsaw.

And that's been my Sunday and Monday. I have a feeling it's going to be a weird week.

More later,