So, as you've probably surmised from my absence, I've been enjoying my summer vacation. I've been doing a lot of reading (mainly Tolkien and Lewis), some roleplaying (with Slusser), and trying to come up with a story idea for a comics sequence to submit to the next issue of "Comic Heads Presents" (Comic Heads being the comics club at MCAD). I know I want it to be set in Ancient Rome, but beyond that, I'm having unusual difficulty in coming up with a plot.

Life has been good for us here. Today, it feels even better: for the first time since the semester ended at the beginning of May, we have a sunny and clear blue sky. It's beautiful outside, and though I'll have to go to work today from 1 PM to 9 PM, I'm going to try to enjoy it as much as possible before then. After the last two months, I now know that I will never be happy living somewhere that gets a lot of rain, or at the least, doesn't get a lot of sunshine. So Seattle's out, I guess.

Honestly, I look forward to returning to the mountains. I miss California quite a bit. Life here has been quite good, as I said, and there's a lot of beauty here that you don't really get in California, but while Minneapolis will always have a prominent role in my fond memories, I belong in California.

James Lileks mentioned "Galactic Pizza" in his Bleat today, and it is every bit as wacky as he suggests (yes, the delivery guys really do wear green spandex bodystockings), but their pizza is pretty good (lots of unusual toppings), and despite the annoying hippie nuances of the hemp brownies, they are very tasty.

I've been interested in the political arena on and off over the last month. Right now, I'm coming off of one of my spurts of political interest, but I continue in my intense distrust of mainstream media. It seems like many media figures have given us more reason than ever to doubt anything they say, and those things they report which are actually true seem to be said in order to bolster al-Qaeda and smear America (when they're not busy patting themselves on the back for things that happened thirty years ago). In lieu of complaining ad nauseum, I'll share a link I found this morning: a blog written by an American in Iraq. His article on the Yezidi people was very interesting (and his "Killing For God" article disturbing), but I specifically wanted to link to an article which demonstrates why the only news we ever hear from Iraq is bad news.

One of the books I've been reading over the weekend is Searching for God Knows What by David Miller. While we're coming from different political views - which he mentions once or twice in the book - he's really very funny, and he has some interesting insights on the Biblical account that I hadn't previously considered. I'm only a third of the way through, but based on what I've read thus far, I recommend it, especially if you think of yourself as a writer.