Dangerous and Cute...Very, Very Cute

I'm writing this from the apartment of my good friends, Bonnie and Darcy, who are in New York for the week and were in need of someone to watch their apartment and the two kittens who reside therein. So far it's been a fun sort of minivacation. I get to stay in a new house, explore a whole new area of my city, and entertain two kittens (who seem generally fine entertaining themselves, so it's really been me who is entertained).

Since I've been here, I have learned that kittens are, apparently, not made out of flesh and bone at all, but pure energy, wrapped in a fuzzy skin. And it spends all day--ALL day--trying to get out. They literally haven't stopped running around the house since I came here. The other thing I've learned is that, when a kitten decides to go somewhere, they will find a way. Last night I barred the bedroom door with a steel toolbox, a towel, and my big backpack, and somehow they still managed to find a way in. And they're just so damn cute...no matter how many times I'm clawed, climbed, pouced, and bitten, I just can't seem to get mad at them.

Went to the jazz fest in Grant Park on Sunday with Bonnie, Darcy, and their downstairs neighbor. Sat out on a blanket, drinking red wine out of plastic cups and eating grapes and a pomegranate. We felt very Bohemian and fancy until a group sat down across from us and pulled out a picnic of fresh bread, a plate of fruits, and a wooden block covered in nice cheeses. They then pulled out a dry salami and started to slice it, followed by some other kind of sausage, followed by a proscuitto, which we drooled over for an hour. Finally, I got up the nerve to go ask them if we might have a slice of proscuitto, and they very happily obliged us with an entire plateful and several slices of good French bread to drink it with. We were in heaven, and I think we were all agreed that, when complete strangers can share proscuitto in a field while listening to Jazz, humanity is really redeemed.

Chapters one and two of my Johnny Theremin are up. My thanks to Laurie Sage, who is handling the Web site, for putting up with me being a moody writer. You can find the link to the site here.

and some links...
My friend, Jennifer Jamsky sent me a link to a Guardian article about a secret movie theater found in the Parisian catacombs. I had seen the article on Neil Gaiman's Journal, but I'm still very obliged to Jenn for sending me the link.

Also on Gaiman's site is Jon's Jail Journal, which is amazing. In the first few months of entries, he details the horrors that inmates in a jail (where people go before they've been sentenced) go through. It's beyond disturbing, and yet I find I can't stop reading it. Particularly interesting is the good-natured humor with which he takes all of it. I wouldn't have been able to maintain that.

And that's it for the night. The kittens have taken to telling me they like me by biting and clawing me while purring.