So, as you may have noticed, I haven't updated the site in a month. Partially this is because I've been extrordinarily busy. Partially this is because some bad things persist in occurring, or in pretending that they've finished occurring but are actually lurking around every corner to trip me and then poke me in the eye with a fondue fork. And I vowed to myself long ago, "I will not let my journal turn into another self-piteous gripe-board." But okay, I'll admit, some things suck right now, and my book project will not die and takes all my time, hence my failure to update (or reply to your email, or hang out with you, or go home, or go to work, etc.)

    Moving on, I should probably announce a few good things. First of all, I had a glorious weekend two weeks ago. I went to Boston in preparation for a show in Northampton, and got to spend some time with some friends. It was lots of good food and good fun, culminating in a dinner on March 13th at a Hibachi grill. This was particularly exciting because the chef decided that after frying some egg, he should chop it up into pieces and catapult bits of it into our mouths. Where by "into our mouths" I mean "In my face". It was... an experience I will probably remember.

    But then it was off to the true highlight of the evening, something I like even more than good food-- good comedy. We saw Bill Cosby perform, and he was absolutely amazing. He went for two and a half hours with no intermission, and if I hadn't been reminded of the passage of time by the fact that I sort of had to pee since around a half-hour in, it would have felt like ten minutes. The man is a genius. And this whole show was following another show he had just done three hours previous, presumably of similar length. Bill Cosby is a very funny fellow, Riiiight!

    Secondly, a pair of friends and I have been working on our own Magic card expansion for roughly a year and a half. We're done now. It's called Twilight, and you can see it here: http://www.lorax.org/~cwarren/twilight/

    This is a very full and fantastic set. 330 cards, chosen from roughly 1200 that we had created, after months and months of tweaking, playtesting, tweaking, playtesting, and tweaking. It's easily one of the most interesting sets of magic cards I've ever seen, and tremendously fun to play with because there are clever strategic decisions to make. And we went whole hog-- the site has a full spoiler, art and flavor text for the cards, and even a link to print out your own copies. Collaboration is difficult, always difficult, so it's very nice when a long-term collaboration comes to fruition in such a pretty way.

    Finally, a while back, Tom said that my shopping story lacked a crucial element that he noticed when he returned to my house. So I'll tell you what he noticed, namely that there is a jar of pickles in my fridge. More on this later.