This is a neighbor cat that ran over to say hi and then got suspicious when I broke out the camera.

My sweetheart did a lovely post of shots around the neighborhood.

Today had some great parts and some aggravating parts. I woke up at 3am and couldn't get back to sleep, we had a plumbing problem which was eventually resolved and then the Internet died. So I spend most of the morning tired and trying to problem solve.

At Noon we zoomed out of the house to the Wordstock Festival one of our favorite annual events. We cruised the floor and saw several people we know. We had tickets to the special Sherman Alexie event. Have you read this great poem Unkissed by him? If you're thinking, oh - I'm not a poetry person, you should read it anyway. It's a poem for everyone. He was awesome as usual and we now each have a signed copy of his new book.

We also saw Shawn Levy talk about his Paul Newman book. We've seen him speak once before and he's always super-interesting with lots of filmgeek details.

You'd think an event like Wordstock: tables and tables of books and a room filled with book geeks would make me more excited about writing. But actually, the volume of stuff overwhelmed me. I want to support the business and buy small press stuff and magazines but I don't have time to read the stuff I already have. Who can read all this stuff? Besides the moms and really loyal colleagues of the writers?

On the way home I was thinking that maybe I'd just recycle 75% of the stuff in my current magazine pile to catch me up to the current month. That was how I resolved my discomfort.

So getting back to Wordstock, it felt like there are already so many books out there. I don't think that's the right attitude I'm just telling you how I felt at the time.

Then we tried to take care of an errand on the way home and were thwarted so now I've got to try to keep my eyes open and finish my daily word count.