Went out to see fireworks last night, with my father and stepmother. Quite nifty. The boardwalk along Tempe Town Lake was packed, so we hopped over the rail and sat on the seawall, which would probably be dangerous if Town Lake had tides, undercurrents, or anything other than t’occasional small, non-biting bug.

The fireworks were very groovy–they did some really neat stuff with fountains off the bridges. St. Paul has fairly good fireworks, but they’re limited by geography–they do them over the capitol, and there’s just not as much space to work with as you get when you can shoot off bridges and barges. About the only detractor was a small child who kept saying “That’s the highest one, right there!” approximately once every 1.8 seconds. (There were lots of small children, but this one was right by my ear.) I amused myself by imagining that he was reliving some hideous past life as a nearsighted Tibetan sherpa, wandering lost among the Himalayas, attempting to navigate by mountain height, before finally being eaten by a saber-toothed yak. (Why, yes, this IS how I keep myself entertained…)

Had a dream last night that I was a crippled Incan prince, being hunted by a creature called a “thermal minotaur” that chased me through a used bookstore/arboretum/steam tunnel. Near the end, my faithful bodyguard, Green Agouti, nobly sacrificed herself to buy me a coupla seconds to get up a ladder, which would’ve been a really smashing idea if I had had working legs. Dang. The monster caught me, and we had a pleasant chat–it had an Aussie accent and was really quite congenial about the fact it was going to kill me–before waking up to a yowling I-want-food-damnit Loki. Your guess is as good as mine–the only bit that struck me as really odd was how precise all the names were.

Today, we’re making sure the laptop I’m borrowing from my Dad for Anthrocon will work the printer, allowing us to do prints on demand.

And hey, new Digger. This one was awkward. I had this plan for the hyena/wolf/whatsit monster to speak in third person for valid, plot-related reasons. James points out, quite rightly, that this will now make everyone think immediately of Gollum. Well, crud. After consulting a few friends, I decided to go with it anyway–there really was a reason, and it won’t last too long–but now I can’t shake the desire to have it say “We hatesss it wombat, we hatesss it forever!”

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