Abominations both eldritch and insectoid

I did a good bit of vacationing this summer vacation, which is why there haven't been posts here. I'll make this round of blog apology brief and get to the more interesting stuff.

First of all, while canoeing with Girlfriend in Cape Cod I ended up taking my cell phone out for a swim. I also learned something from the experience about how deep you can sink into mud, and how hard it can be to pull your feet back up out of the bottom of a lake.

It was certainly time for my phone to go. I was still using the phone I got in 2006, which made it about 140 in phone years. So although it did not prove absolutely necessary, my unpremeditated swim provided a good excuse to get a new, "actual" phone, which is to say a small computer that is also capable, with some coaxing, of making phone calls.

What's more fun, the experience in the muck informed the Heroes' Tears adventure I was working on. It's a very swampy adventure, and/but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I'm hoping I will have the chance to share it with the world, and not just with the people who will be paying me directly for it.

What else? I wish the saga of my house and its vermin was complete, but it is not. The mice, I think, heard about the bedbugs downstairs and decided to leave. But bedbugs there are, and the Great Inconvenience has been scheduled for next week. And the week after that. And the week after that. Our landlord probably could have arranged for a less onerous treatment, but, of course, no inconvenience is too great when it's someone else's problem. If I'm overly bitter about this (and I'm sure I am), it's likely because there is still no sign of bedbugs in my house; this is all because of what's going on downstairs.

Enough of that, though. I'm writing an adventure.

One definitely good thing, one possibly terrible thing

At the end of this week I'll be back to Seattle for... something or other. I dunno. I let Girlfriend handle these things.

Actually I'm more on top of my social schedule than usual at the moment (I bought a planner!) and I am well aware that my illustrious friends Bryan and Katie are getting married (to each other, no less) the Saturday after next. So I will be heading there to congratulate them, and also to catch Bryan's last performance in a universally praised The Importance of Being Earnest. It's not every week you get to see a live romantic comedy where one of the actors actually gets married at the end.

To temper the joy you are probably feeling at this moment, I choose this moment to reveal that I am currently investigating the possibility that my new house has bed bugs. I hope it proves to be otherwise, but after finding three small bug bites in a line across my stomach today, I've laid down tape at the edge of the beds in hope--no, not in hope, but fear--of catching a few as they go about their vile business. No, I do not hope to find bedbugs--and God knows the neighborhood is rife with other suspects--but if they are here my malice toward them is endless.

The good news seems to be, at least, that some of the more extreme bed bug remedies, i.e., arson and seppuku, are no longer recommended.

We shall see, and hopefully we shall sort it out quickly (as these things go).