A few weeks ago on the phone with a friend, I learned that Joss Whedon was writing a virtual eighth season of his television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in comic book form. This is NOT a review of the comics, though I will say I’ve now read the first two (sadly, my copy of the first issue was from the second printing, not the first) and had forgotten how frustrating it is to be gripped by a story, and have to wait a month for the next part.

In any case, I haven’t read any kind of comic book, save for a beautiful Beauty and the Beast graphic novel, since I was ten or so, and read reprinted first-year Superman comics (and Supergirl) comics that I read in one sitting, on a hot and sunny summer afternoon. I remember sitting on my bed, with a glass of iced tea next to me, and my white poodle sitting next to me, my hair twisted into a single tight braid.

My hair was in braids a lot when I was nine and ten. Usually one, sometimes two. I have very fine hair that tangles far too easily, and I have a lot of it. Even now I braid it at night, or at least twist it into a bun on the top of my head, so that I don’t wake up with a matted rat’s nest of hair. Back then, though, I had a pass to the community pool, so there were weeks when my hair was braided once, and then I’d be swimming every day, showering every night, and only unravelling it for a thorough washing every three or four days. When you’re ten you can get away with that.

The Buffy comics brought all that back. And even though I read them on a cold and snowy day in April, and not in the heat of summer, there’s a part of me that was ten years old today. Again.

If you live in the general vicinity of Connecticut or New York, the article A Garden Cures Rootlessness, by Larry Bloom, will be in tomorrow’s edition of the New York Times. If you don’t, clicking on the article title in the last sentence will take you there.

Go read it – and not just because it’s about my aunt.

My skin still hurts, although the pain is ebbing, slowly. It was a serious sunburn. I feel stupid – but I was wearing sunscreen, and I don’t generally burn much, if at all. My skin and clothes and sheets have all taken on the slightly herb-y scent of the aloe gel, however. It smells the way green should smell. Not sharp like grass, which is a more yellow-green scent, but softer, darker, a little bit sinister.

While working today, I was half-watching wind making choppy waves in the pool, glimpsing the fin of our toy shark from time to time. In the grey light we’ve had on and off – mostly on – all day, I can blur the deck into sand and almost feel like I’m sitting near a beach. And I like the beach during inclement weather. It’s so much more primal when not filled with the sound of sizzling (human) meat.

Thus inspired, I put on the original JAWS followed by DEEP BLUE SEA, in a sort of personal shark movie mini-marathon. I work better with background noise, and movies and television with their conversational rhythms are easier for me to not quite hear than music – especially music with lyrics – which distracts, inspires, and makes me have to stand on the bridge spanning my living room and sing.

After a quick assignment to change some code, which turned into an hour-long headache because the template broke, I took a lunch break and checked the mail. DIRTY DANCING: HAVANA NIGHTS was one of the Blockbuster films waiting for me. I’ve seen it before, of course, but never on disc, just on cable, so I wanted to see the special features and hear the commentary, which is quite interesting. I feel very much at home inside this film. I may have been born in 1970, and my family may be Italian and German immigrants, but a part of my soul is from pre-Revolution Cuba (and I still owe SG a ficlet about that).

I am tired this afternoon. So tired.
I think I will rest now.
And do more work later.

… I’d been having such a pleasant morning, working outside.

If I were a Thanksgiving turkey I’d be on the cover of a cooking magazine right now. Why? Because my face, arms, chest and upper back are burnt to a crisp.

It was too nice a day to work indoors this morning, so I dragged the Zen, the Mac, and the Razr out to the deck, sat in one of the cushy deck chairs at the glass topped patio table, with the glass doors behind me, and the shiny blue pool in front of me, and settled in to work.

I had, in fact, slathered on sunscreen before going out. I mean, I don’t generally burn at all, but I’m not stupid. Apparently, I didn’t slather on enough, though, and I didn’t realize I was getting crispy and red because there was a lovely breeze and I didn’t feel hot.

When I was forced to move inside because of a software glitch I needed to test on another computer, I noticed myself in a mirror, and thought, “Ooops.”

Two hours of work, a coldcold shower, lots of aloe-laced lotion, and three bottles of water later, “ooops” became “ouch!” My skin is glowy red – nuclear plant red – from the first knuckle on each finger to the where the chair reached on my back. And it’s still throwing off heat, which means I’m feeling both chilled, and rather tempted to claw the skin off my arms.

Fuzzy got off the plane at 5:30, and I crashed about then, waking when he came home to present me with an orange Jamba Juice and a kiss. “My god,” he said. “You’re really burnt, Lovey.”

Fuzzy is really good at stating the obvious.

The good news is, I work from home, so if I’m in too much pain to put a bra on for the next couple days, it’s not a big deal.

As for tonight? We had a tornado warning, and are having a dramatic rainstorm, and I’m hungry, and wanted a cheeseburger but that would mean putting a bra on, and, for that matter, something other than a soft cotton eight-sizes-overlarge shirt. So I’m thinking cold cereal more water, and a vicodin are in order.

First, a recap of the weekend:

Friday was a dark and stormy night, and since Fuzzy didn’t even get home til eight, there was no way we were going to make it to CSz. We made a brief, waterlogged, run to Blockbuster, Steak-and-Shake (which is no longer open 24/7), and Starbucks, and came home to snuggle on the red faux-suede couches with the furry storm-freaked dogs.

Saturday saw blue skies, cool weather, and happy faces. Fuzzy went off to get a hair cut and do some light grocery shopping, and I puttered on the computer, never leaving bed, but sitting with the windows open and fresh air curling around me. We left the house around 3:30, and went to Panera for soup and salads, and then to Barnes and Noble where I picked up MacFormat and MacWorld and a bunch of writing magazines, and some books. While Fuzzy looked for a plane – book, I sipped a Raspberry Italian Soda, which was actually a Raspberry French soda – if there’s no cream it’s Italian, if there’s cream it’s French – but was light, summery, and tasty, and really, that’s the point.

We got to the Arena (the ComedySportz theatre is referred to as the Arena) in time to help with final clean-up, had teams assigned, with one rostered player being replaced on the liners because he was stuck in traffic. (He showed up just as we were starting the show, and played in the late show.)

Warm-ups were interesting – we’ve started making our pre-show (but not pre-workshop) warm-ups a little crazy by beginning with Woosh-Bong, as always, but then, instead of clearly stopping one game and moving on, someone will just change it to another game at random, so, standing outside the circle, you’d hear, “Woosh, woosh, woosh, bong! Woosh, woosh, Zip!” and the use of Zip would morph it into another game called Zip-Zap-Zop, and we’d play that for a bit, then go back to woosh-bong which we’d interrupt with FuzzyDuck, so that by the end, your brain explodes from trying to remember not just what comes next, but which game you’re even playing. It sounds confusing, but it really builds energy and concentration. We played a bit of Finish the Word, and then did our counting exercise – we stand in a huddle, and close our eyes, and count to ten, one voice at a time, and if two people say the same number, we start over til we make it to ten. It’s a quiet exercise, and it takes all that energy we just built, and sort of tucks it inside each of us so we’ll have it on the field. Finally, we do the beep circle – passing the word beep around the circle, faster and faster until we’re all chanting it, at which point we put our hands in the center of the circle and shout “Comedy Sportz!”

In the first match tonight, a sold-out show for the Knights of Columbus and their wives, I was on the Blue team. We opened with Beastie Rap, which we lost, though I think the red team really rotated more than we did, and then Red played 4-Headed Broadway Star with a drunk audience volunteer. They were funny, but the volunteer really didn’t get the point of the game. After that, we played Dinner at Joe’s with a volunteer who wasn’t quite as sloshed, though he was a bit unwilling to ring the ‘no’ buzzer. In the second round, we played SlideShow, with two audience volunteers (one of whom was more interested in flirting with Von than being in the game) and Red played Forward and Reverse, which was hilarious, as always. One of the guys from my audition group – hard to believe it’s been almost a year now – is getting so GOOD. Red played Five Things, and guessed three of them, but then Big E, who was reffing, accidentally gave away one of the things they hadn’t successfully guessed in the fourth thing, so he had to give it to them.

At half-time, our troupemate, Craig, who teaches percussion, did a half-time show. Most of us had no idea this was going to happen, but he was amazing, revealing talents we hadn’t previously seen – he did a beat poetry number, and then some singing and playing with four mallets on the xylophone. And then a drunk guy from the audience threw a beer can at him. J2, who was watching the show, immediately went to intervene, but when Drunk Guy got testy, J2 backed off and got our director. Director and Von – who is 6’7″ tall – went to handle the situation. Craig, meanwhile, kept going as if nothing had happened. I’m impressed by that as much as by his talent.

Blue played Blind Line for our catchup round, and then, because it was late and we had a second show, we went right into the last game, 185. I went out before the whistle once, anticipating too much – the refs don’t always blow the whistle for each round – It was a great show, overall, and I’m not just saying that because Blue won the match.

Second show, the audience was mostly kids – including a youth group from Wisconsin. I was on the Red team for that show, Rob reffed, and Big E was our team captain. We won Beastie Rap – going forever on the names “Bob” and “Anna,” it seemed. We then played Changing Emotions and styles in which, again, our refs have started to make it a little harder by combining suggestions, so while we get stuff like “UPer” and “Surprised” in the beginning, they’ll give us things like “Depressed redneck” as the game progresses. Blue played Forward and Reverse, and J2 did this amazing fall as his entrance, which meant that, of course, the ref would keep making him do it over and over and over. I’m surprised the kid could walk afterwards. We played Blind Line for our second game, and they played Dinner at Joe’s, and the kid who was “Joe” was laughing so hard he kept forgetting to “ding” or “buzz” the actors. We played Five Things, and it wasn’t the worst game ever, but I think by then we were all kinda tired, and ADD-ish, and then, when we were writing the sub sheets, our pens were fading, so I had a hard time reading stuff. We got four out of five, though.

Craig did his music thing again at half-time, and no one threw anything, but we weren’t watching from the wings, so I’m not sure what the audience reaction was.

After half time, Blue played Dance party, and then we played 185, eliminating the 2nd half refs challenge because we were all nearly unconscious (this time) instead of merely short on time. Blue won, but it was a good match.

What I loved was that after both matches audience members were arguing over who should have won. This is cool because it means they were totally into the whole concept of comedy as a competition.

We didn’t do notes. We all went home. Fuzzy and I stopped at Denny’s on the way to eat dinner without being molested by small dogs, and then we went to bed. Which is where I still am.

Fuzzy, otoh, is getting ready for his trip.

The Apple Store (U.S.) – MacBook

My friend and fellow geek Ms. Eclectic turned me on to some really cool software that, alas, is Mac-Only. I’ve been a pc baby since dirt, and I resisted, feeling like I was somehow crossing to the dark side, but Windows Vista scares the hell out of me, and I do recognize that Apple has long been the leader when it comes to tools for writing and publishing, so I talked to BossGuy and he fronted me the money for a 15″ MacBook. I got the mid-range model, with an 80 gig hard drive, and added an extra gig of RAM, and about a week after I placed the order, it showed up at my door.

I’m not using it as much as I should, because so much of my stuff is still on my Vaio laptop and my self-built desktop (which, I must add, has a cool green mod-light), but for the most part, I do like it. The box was cute, well, designed, and something to save. The laptop itself still strikes me as a bit toy-ish, but I’m getting over that. I do like the fast response time, and the hardly ever having to reboot.

It has been a week of grey rainy weather, punctuated by thunder and lightning, with last night’s finale being spectacularly dramatic. By the time Fuzzy got home from downtown Dallas, it was too late to go to CSz, and though we did brave the weather, for a quick run to Blockbuster, Steak-n-Shake, and Starbucks.

We came home and sat in the dimly lit living room, and ate juicy cheeseburgers while watching Eragon on DVD, and I have to say, the flashes of lightning beyond our window only enhanced the experience.

Earlier I wished for a good horror movie, or thriller, to go with the weather, and ended up catching up on Lifetime TV’s Blood Ties series on TiVo, which is based on Tanya Huff’s series of novels. Christina Cox is excellent in the lead role, and my only wish is that every episode was two hours long.

Today, the sky seems unnaturally blue, the kind of blue you generally only see in the mountains of Colorado, where the air is thin, and you’re above the smog. I suppose it’s not actually any bluer than usual, and just seems like that in contrast to the previous week – rather like the TechniColor portion of The Wizard of Oz after the black-and-white Kansas scenes.

Tonight: 2 shows at CSz. Tomorrow: I put Fuzzy on a plane to Rochester, NY.

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Originally uploaded by Ms.Snarky.

…for Zorro, an eight-pound chihuahua mix, is NOT the brown bed in which he was photographed yesterday (that one really belongs to Miss Cleo), but my backpack, shown here on my desperately-in-need-of-sweeping-and-an-area-rug office floor. Do note that he’s got the strap over his hind quarters.

I often wonder if he chooses his nap spots because he knows it’s far more pathetic to be curled up on a bag, or a pile of folders, or whatever, and therefore more likely to catch my attention.

In any case, he’s an able assistant, and does really good job of keeping that backpack on the floor.