It's official: die snugglepuff is safe and sound on the ground in NY.

Soon...

... very soon...

... it will be time to teach Alvin how to use a lighter so he can light my cigarettes.*

But before that happens, I'll be accompanying my mother plus my sister and her brood to San Marcos tomorrow afternoon, where they will take one nephew and the niece to see that movie about the culinary rat while I will accompany the other (older) nephew and his dad to see transforming robots blow up shit real good. Why we're doing this in San Marcos escapes me at the moment, but that's fine.

And now that these announcements have been shared, I will return to the latest Block book (HOPE TO DIE, and I'm about halfway through).

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* Of course, since I'm theoretically going to quit smoking during my vacation -- just as soon as the last pack in the fridge is smoked, which should be sometime late tomorrow night or early Saturday -- I'm not sure how useful this will be. Nevertheless, it seems like the right thing to do, don't you think? I suppose once he's trained I could send him to set my enemies on fire. If I had any enemies. And if he possessed any kind of navigational skills whatsoever. Plus I'm not technically sure how he'd carry the lighter... do you suppose they make fanny packs for kitties? Could he even figure out how to open it? Well, I guess if I put some tuna inside he'd figure it out eventually... probably at the wrong time, but eventually....

We ran a number of errands after work, including a stop at the library, where I picked up the following swell items:

BOOKS:
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Lonn Friend -- LIFE ON PLANET ROCK
Jeff Apter -- NEVER ENOUGH: THE STORY OF THE CURE
Garry Trudeau -- THE LONG ROAD HOME
Blush / Petros -- .45 DANGEROUS MINDS

CDs:
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Edith Piaf -- SOUVENIRS box set
Peter Paul and Mary -- CARRY IT ON box set

O, such treasures! And now I shall depart to begin digging into the gold pile...!

Latest update: Still no DSL. We will go out tomorrow after I get off work and look at a couple more places. This... is becoming most annoying. And it turns out the library has not even heard of the Joe Hill book, much less ordered it, so I guess I'll be buying it after all on payday. I did at least manage to check out the book by Owen King, WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

I did get a very large box in the mail today, but I have not opened it up to see what surprises it holds....

We still have not solved the DSL problem -- Radio Shack didn't have what I was looking for. Office Depot apparently does, though, so tomorrow while I am slaving away at work, R. will go try to procure one. Then... who knows? In the meantime, I have two words for SBC and they are not "hello sunshine."

I am puny, so once we leave my mother's and go home, I almost certainly will crash early.

I need the debut novel, HEART SHAPED BOX, by this guy. I scoped out the book at HEB and judging from the first few pages I read, he's definitely a chip off the old block. The apple does not fall far from the tree and all that. Now if I just knew what name his brother was writing under so I could check him out too, that would be nice....

Blah blah blah. More when I know something or I'm back online or something.