There are two big new additions to the Collins Household. The first is the sexy new iBook I’m currently using to blog this entry with. The Missus and I both use Macs at work, and her old PC was increasingly slow and unreliable, and I’d love to have the ability to use a word processor during my 2 hours worth of train rides every workday, so there you have it. We haven’t used it to do much except blog from bed, upload a bunch of Karolyn‘s pictures of Jeffrey Brown from WizardWorld Chicago, and attempt to look at Tori Amos porn, but we’ll let you know if we get it to do something particularly neat.
The second is a lovely little lady named Lucy, a crosseyed calico cat who is now our baby. We brought her home from a local shelter called Bide-a-Wee this afternoon, and that was pretty much the last we saw of her: She’s been hiding under the bed ever since. Apparently she comes out when we’re not in the room–we can tell because her food’s been eaten, her litter’s been used, and her catnip toy keeps moving around. We’re told that many cats are like this for a while after moving into someone’s place from a shelter, so we’re not offended. And she’s just adorable. How she’s found room to hang out under the bed without being smushed between all those comic books is beyond me.
(I know, I know–a few days ago I was saying how I can’t be buying so many comics every week, and then all of a sudden I come home with a laptop and a pet. But both were essentially paid for by my folks–the computer was purchased with long-unused wedding-gift money intended for just such a purchase, and all the cat supplies were donated to us because my parents had bought it all with the intention of getting a cat a few months back but then never ended up doing so. The bank remains unbroken.)
What else is new? Amanda, in additon to cat- and computer-getting activities, has been painting quite a bit ever since she got really excited about it during an art-therapy class at Renfrew. She does lovely, evocative things with colors. The paintings can be hard to look at when you know what they’re really depicting, but it’s a much healthier way to work these things out than her previous coping mechanisms. The most recent one is a larger version of the final panel of a comic Amanda drew the other day, one which nearly tore my heart out. And they’re beautiful, too. We’ve got to get them framed–our apartment looks so bare, since we’ve nothing on the walls.
We’ve also managed to acquire an original page of art from Craig Thompson‘s Blankets. It’s the first such thing we’ve ever gotten, and we’re both just kinda stunned that we have it.
We actually saw two whole friends of ours today, plus my parents and brother, all of which made us feel very popular.
It’s really exhausting to be friendly with the people I’m friendly with and have the politics I have. (Not the friends we saw today, actually, but most everyone else.) I mean, I walk around wondering why there aren’t Rosie the Riveter and Uncle Sam rollin’ up his sleeves-kinda posters on the walls of my office–I am seriously gung ho, Big Two-style gung ho (this current period being, in my opinion, Big Four). And then I realize that a goodly percentage of the people in my various fields of endeavor and interest think I’m stupid, insane, dangerous, or all three. I spend so much time hearing things that make me want to pound on the table, and then I realize that if I were to open my mouth, that’s exactly how I’d make everyone else feel, and that’s an incredibly alienating feeling. You really do wonder: Have you given up on people? Have they given up on you? Are your beliefs strong enough and important enough that the answers to those questions don’t matter enough to change those beliefs? I want to go back to 10th grade, when my bad guys and the bad guys of the bands I listened to were the same people. I miss that so much.
Well, things may have changed, but my ability to pick fights with cranks is a gloriously reliable constant.
Please go ye and eat Edy’s Pumpkin Ice Cream. It’s a limited edition flavor–they disappear these suckers right after New Year’s. You’ve only got a few months to eat it, and believe me, that is not enough time.
I’ve added a whole bunch of new folks to my blogroll, and shuffled the thing around a bit generally. Browse away.
Ken, if you don’t blog about “the sweater-vest incident,” I will.