“Bear Skin: A Puppy’s Hunting Trophy” This week’s Photo Friday topic is skin.

The play I was drafted into finished its run a week ago, and it had a very successful run. I spent most of the week since then decompressing. The weather was cold and wet. We had another ten straight days of rain, but unlike the last time the rain was gentle. The cool air kept the ground from drying, so there wasn’t much I could do around the farm. I did manage to work like a madman over the weekend, though, as the skies cleared and the temperatures rose. All seven spring beds have now been prepped, and three have been planted. The other four will get their seeds and seedlings this week, and then next weekend I’ll get to work like a madman again to get the seven summer beds ready. It will be a lot easier to prep them, though, as they were the spring and fall beds from last year, and so have no sod to bust. I also need to start the tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings in the greenhouse. Several weeks behind schedule, yes, but I’ll get caught up soon enough. On top of that, I had one of those amazingly productive weeks at work, which kept me from writing even a few words here. It’s cutting edge work, using XSL stylesheets to transform complicated XML data into very flexibly defined PDF documents. How-to books on this new technology are just now coming out, but what I’m doing is well beyond much of the tutorials (and in some cases beyond the technology itself). I’m making it work, though, and I find it very satisfying, like a grand logic puzzle. Also, my Friday Photo “Spring” entry was deemed to be “noteworthy”, which was nice. My spirits have lifted, just in time for my body to come down with a cold. Or SARS. Whichever… I’ll work right through it.

“A Time to Plant” This week’s Photo Friday topic is spring.

Welcome, students enrolled in the University of Washington’s COM 480 class: Ethnography of On-Line Roleplaying Games.

Wysteria was unknown to me until I moved to Georgia, and now it is one of my favorite plants.

The large purple flowers appear this time of year and look like large bunches of grapes. The woody vines are rather invasive, so many people here do not like them. Not me, though. An old-growth wysteria tree stops me in my tracks every time.

I really can’t stand watching the all-news channels right now, for plenty of reasons. I’ve no reason to either, thanks to The Agonist by Sean Paul Kelley. Sean has been working tirelessly since the shooting started to aggregate news stories from around the world. He is what Matt Drudge thinks he is: fast, accurate, and voluminous.

On the “Big Dog” Canine Island, It’s a land that’s fair and bright, The rabbits grow on bushes And you sleep out every night. The caves all are empty And the sun shines every day I’m bound to go Where there ain’t no snow Where the sleet don’t fall And the winds don’t blow On the “Big Dog” Canine Island.

“Focus!” This week’s Photo Friday topic is glass.

The play opens tomorrow, so my directing work is nearly done. Here’s a writeup on it in our local paper.

The play I was drafted into directing opens this Friday, so I spent both Saturday and Sunday at the final set calls making sure everything got finished. Still, Chris and I managed to sneak off Saturday night and watch Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai show now playing in Atlanta. This was our first Cirque show, and we were both awed by the performers, costumes, music, and everything else. Well, not so much the big post that partially obscured our view, but everything else, yes. My readers near Chicago might want to look into tickets, because it’s not to be missed. Also, I managed to find enough time and drained soil to plant a whole mess of peas, carrots, and radishes. It might be too late for the peas, but it couldn’t be helped.