Something very strange has happened to me. I've fallen in love with the music of an artist who is younger than me... That may not seem so strange to most people, but I have never before loved music that didn't begin long, long before I was born. Whenever I've fallen in love with music before, the artist behind it has existed in a dual way -- as the talented twenty-year-old who has suddenly been discovered by the world, but also as the weathered sixty-year-old who is making a splash with his latest comeback album. Brian Wilson, the Monkees, Elton John, and even my latest love, They Might Be Giants. Each of them has a current self and a youthful self that is still available to be discovered by new fans, complete with decades of back albums.

But Owl City has only one self. There is no past to go back and discover... He's only starting out. I guess that means there's a lot to look forward to from him? For a science-fiction writer, I am strangely un-used to looking forward.

I entered some photos in a Pet Day Photo Contest a month or so back, and two of them won prizes. The results from the contest are posted here:

http://oregonstate.edu/vetmed/pet-day/cat-photo

When I heard about the contest, I figured that with years and years of cat photos on my hard drive, I really ought to enter some. So, I dug through and picked out a few of my favorite shots of Heidi and Theresa. (One of those won "Cutest Picture.") However, then I thought that since I haven't really figured out a way to advertise Space Hounds! at all, maybe I should include a picture of Kelly in place of one of the really cute pictures of Heidi and Theresa. I haven't owned Kelly as long -- she's still under a year old -- so, I don't have as many excellent pictures of her yet. She has gotten a lot of camera time for her appearances on Space Hounds!, but those photos tend to be campier. I'm aiming for pictures that tell a good story with silly dialogue written over them -- not pictures that are beautiful in their own right.

Nonetheless, I picked out the best picture of Kelly in her spacesuit that I had, stripped off her line of dialogue ("Fortunately, I'm well versed in the fifth law of thermodynamics!"), and replaced it with a simple direction to the website (www.spacehounds.com).

Which all adds up to me being really surprised that it's the picture of Kelly a.k.a. Kelliah, wrestling with a macro-string on TJ Barker's spaceship, that won "Judge's Pick."

A conversation with Elaine about why her Auntie M. gets to have a birthday party before she does took an interesting turn:

Elaine: "I was born in July!"
Me: "Yes. And Auntie M. was born in June."
Elaine: "And Daddy was born in computers!"

We found feral cats living under my mother's deck. One gray tabby mama and four kittens. I was the first to spot a kitten, and I couldn't fit a non-kitten-shaped thought in my mind from that moment on. Unfortunately, I live an hour away from my mother's deck, and I have various responsibilities in my life -- including a rather noisy two-year-old, Sheltie, and spaniel -- that kept me away.

Nevertheless, I waited nightly for news of the kittens. Sunday: confirmation that I had not conjured up imaginary kitten ghosts from the depths of a kitten-deprived mind. Monday: that the kittens were being trained to eat on my mom's deck. Tuesday: a fourth kitten appeared! By Thursday, I could stand it no longer and designed a homemade kitten trap involving an old sheet and a lot of string. The design was classic... cheesy, even. No one who's seen Return of the Jedi would fall for it. But, I figured, these kittens probably hadn't seen that kind of movie.

I sat on the roof, silent and motionless, for twenty minutes before I saw any feral cats, and then it was only the mama. It had been fifty minutes before the kittens even appeared. More than two hours passed before hunger outweighed caution for all four of them. Four kittens, perched around a plastic bowl, on a sheet, ten feet beneath me. I pulled the strings, and the corners of the parachute shot up. The kittens scattered, and their distributed weights tipped the ballooning cloth. Two escaped. Two were caught.

Over the next two days, we managed to catch the final two kittens and the mama with a traditional live trap. (Once any given cat has seen a parachute trap in action, it will never fall for it again.) But, I don't know that I've ever done anything quite so thrilling before as catch myself a pair of wild kittens in a parachute trap.

Seattle and Eugene both get a lot of rainy weather, but Eugene gets a lot more rainbow weather.

Also, I walked by a garden today that was decorated with small, stone statues of angels. Seen with the eyes of a Doctor Who fan, the angels gave the garden a very neat, creepy vibe. I suspect they weren't meant that way.

The strangest thing happened today. I was taking Quinn for a walk around the neighborhood. He was just commenting on the unusual density of palm trees around Eugene -- saying that it was almost as if Eugene thought it was California -- when I suddenly realized we were actually in California. I don't know how I'd missed it. One minute, we were walking around College Hill, and the next minute, there we were, in Cupertino. Of course, before I could even catch Quinn's eye to see if he'd seen it too, we were right back home.

Neither of us said much for the rest of the walk, and I think he's still a bit too shaken up to talk about it. It's too bad it couldn't have happened later in the week though -- that sure would save a long drive down to Baycon.

Elaine is watching "The Secret of NIMH" on her computer. She loves the main character and calls her "Name-is-Risby." A few moments ago, Elaine proposed an expedition. She said, "Name-is-Risby is in the movie... Let's go get her!" Then, after holding her hands ineffectually toward her monitor for a few moments, "I can't reach her!"