Snow in the tops of the mountains today. I've got pictures to prove it. I love being back in Montana.

Prepping for a visit from Sarah. Must... look... civilized....

Books: Wacky research fills the days and nights. Did you know there's a propensity for animal feet among supernatural beings? There's the typical cloven hooves but also duck feet, lizard feet, dog paws, you name it. I'm not making this up.

And about the Emmys (how does one pluralize that word) I love Felicity Huffman, it's about time she got an award of some kind. And yay Patricia Arquette. It's nice to see some first-time winners. If nothing else, they have genuine emotional reactions. Lost for best drama series? The voters really are ready for something new.

Oh wait, Everybody Loves Raymond won yet again. Ugh. Also, how weird was that to have a Katrina poster child on stage? I had to flip channels at that point. We've been watching the pictures for weeks. We need to personalize it more than we already have? Tacky.

I've been giving Sarah a hard time about not updating her blog, so I guess I'd better do some blogging myself before she catches on.

I'm not blogging about New Orleans, as I'm sure you've noticed. Lots of other people are doing that already and I'd just make people unnecessarily angry by publishing my thoughts on the subject. Just ask Sarah, she's worried now that I'm a radical anarchist. And we all know the Internet doesn't need any more of those.

Books: Why can't I write a simple short story? The one I wrote a while back has spawned concepts for a series of stories. Which could be made into a book. Which could have sort of an underlying plot developing through the whole book if I was careful. Why can't I do anything simple?

Books: There was a crowd at the bookstore near my house this evening so I stopped by to see what was going on Saturday night at Borders. I had my suspicions. Sure enough, it was Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon and now his latest book, Eldest. I walked around a bit just to see how it was all going. The store was busy. The line was long. Apparently there were numbered tickets you could pick up in advance. The whole bookstore staff seemed to be on duty. Plus there were two guys on security trying to look inconspicuous. Everyone else was under 12 or their parents. Except one group that really intrigued me, but they were older gentlement and I could really only hang around evesdropping for so long. I think they were authors, but I didn't work out who they were. I need to find out more about what published authors live around here.