forever may you run

Happily, last night's storms were over by this morning, although we're forecasted to have continuing storms off and on through at least the middle of next week. Our pond's peninsula is covered in water, and Michael saw a deer standing on the dam drinking out of the pond, which indicates a much higher water level than usual. But while the continued wetness is bad both for my dad's business and for any plans to do landscaping around the house, we're in much better shape than the many towns in Iowa (including Des Moines) that are experiencing some pretty intense flooding.

I did v. little today; I'm taking a few days off from thinking about the novel so that I can approach it with fresh eyes for the second draft, which commences next week. So I played quite a bit of Wii, including some with my brother tonight; we were playing a fighting game when I heard the distinctive sound of a real gunshot blast upstairs. This isn't exciting enough to cause serious alarm, but I asked my dad about it later, and he reported that he killed a raccoon which had been eating the cat food on the patio. Considering that six kittens showed up on our doorstep yesterday, in addition to the two slightly older kittens we already had, preservation of cat food from the ravaging hordes of raccoons and possums is an important battle. Then again, we have a particularly high kitten mortality rate, since they live in the wild and so are prey to hawks, other cats, inclement weather, etc. -- none of last year's kittens survived, so the likelihood that we'll have eight additional full-grown cats next year is dismal at best.

The other good things that happened tonight were 1) Gavin Rossdale played on David Letterman, which was the first time I was excited about seeing Letterman in a v. long time; and 2) Craig Ferguson did a couple of hilarious skits tonight. The first was one in which he plays Sean Connery and some other guy plays Craig Ferguson; Craig has the most trouble keeping in character during those, and he completely lost it tonight when the fake Craig put his legs on the desk to reveal he wasn't wearing any pants, and had just shaved his legs and put on high heels in preparation for his second job as a pole dancer. The second was his 'The Rather Late Programme with Prince Charles', in which he pretends to be Prince Charles hosting an English late-night show; he had a skit-within-a-skit of 'Stupid Peasant Tricks', which was awesome. So, Craig was a great way to finish off the night.

Tomorrow is an exciting Round Barn-filled day; I'll report about that tomorrow. Now, it's time for bed!