Well, it appears spring has finally come to the Pacific Northwest. Three days in a row with warm weather and sun—I feel spoiled, almost, with this bounty of light. And lights are popping up in other areas too: good freelance work in the short term, a couple of fulltime job possibilities for the long term, and finally a certain sense of peace about the future after several tumultuous months of underemployment. With summer just on the horizon, it's a good place to be.

Spent yesterday over at Lee & Tanya's, hanging out, eating chicken, and reading the Junie B. Jones books to the girlies. I can't recall ever having read aloud to kids in an extended way, and was happily surprised to find that I'm pretty good at it. Not quite the master of different voices that Lee or my Dad is, but with good inflection, humor, and a certain sense of timing. It helps that books are also very well written and quite funny— I'll probably end up adding them to my kid book collection along with the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. Speaking of which, I saw a great episode of Biography the other night about J.K. Rowling. It was refreshing to see someone on the series who wasn't an actor, a musician, or royalty for a change. I especially like the couple of segments they had of her rummaging through the piles of original manuscript and backstory, looking for especially good tidbits to show & tell. I felt a bit better afterward about all of my half-full spiral notebooks down in the basement.