I'm back. But then, so are the bugs.

They've been here since I moved in almost seven years ago. Long, hairy, quick as the Flash wormy things that are unlike any bugs I had ever seen before. In the winter, they disappear. They probably die, but these things are so bizarre I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly sprouted wings and flew south for the winter. They return around April or May. I'll see one every two weeks, then it becomes one a week, then I see them a few times a week.

This morning I reached for the kitchen faucet handle and one was behind it on the wall. Which worries me. Usually they are in my office, on the wall across the room. Or maybe they might be in the bathroom, where the air is moist and there are lots of holes to get in and out of, in the walls and down drains. Sometimes they are in the hallway, running into cracks when I make a noise. But now they've invaded a certain area where that I want off limits! Damn you, this is where I wash my dishes! This is just inches from where I prepare my food! Go away or I'll...

...well, I'll do nothing, because as soon as I kill one (a horrific sight, actually, like out of a Peckinpah film), there are two to take it's place. And this is the way it will continue until October or so. When the frosty air starts and sends them back to the hell they came.

Oh, I have snails too, attached to a couple of the windows of my house, on the outside. It's a regular Mutual Of Omaha's Wild Kingdom here.

Taking the month off was a good thing to do. I did it for two reasons: one, I had a minor operation that meant I had to rest as much as possible (cool! a medical reason to watch TV and read!). Two, I really wanted to start writing fiction seriously again. I remember being a kid (jeez, suddenly I'm like my mom..."why, when I was your age, we walked 3 hours to school...) and writing a lot of fiction. Because I didn't care what I wrote. There was a devil-may-care, let's do this for fun, no one's gonna see it air about it, creating these stories that only I would see. When you're a writer and you get older, you start to make compromises. In general, the closer you get to fiction, the less money you make (and don't e-mail me with the figure on what King or Grisham will make on their next book). Business writing is where the money is, and if that stuff isn't compromise I don't know what is. But it serves a purpose. But I digress.

I wanted to start writing fiction on a regular basis again. Not just the novel (final edit right now!), but also short stories and little fictional flights of fancy that I used to jot down in my journal. The month off helped me get back to that.

There comes a time when the web site has to take a back seat to the other stuff. But there's room for both.

Let me get this straight: they cancel Now and Again, Sports Night, Action, and Freaks and Geeks, but Two Guys and A Girl gets to come back? It's almost surreal, isn't it?

I won't spoil the X-Files if you taped last night's episode and haven't watched it. But let's just say it didn't have just one whammy at the end, or two, or three, it had FOUR. And two of them I actually didn't even hear about beforehand on my web travels! It's one of the few times that the FOX hype ("the episode that will change everything!") was actually true. Some interesting possibilities for next year.

OK, there's my geek quota for the day.

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