Will somebody give me $100 so I can buy...

...this little guy?

I'm surfing around looking for zombie-related items, and I found him on Etsy. Oh, how I want him! I love how you can stuff his intestines into the little pouch on his tummy!

Why am I looking for zombie items? Because I got this literary masterpiece in my e-mail today, written by my nephew Angelo:

Angelo and the curse of the living dead.

Ones Opon a time ther was a boy and two girls. They were on a mishin to find the crystl skull but they got lost and ran into a grave yard.

It had bones laing arawnd and they herd a nowes it sawnded like it was behind them a bone hand landed on gianna she turnd arawnd she saw a skeleton she scremd we ran to her.

I wesperd the living dead we all tock awt ar sords and fot in till all the scelaton wer gon and we won the batel and we fownd the crystal scal AND THAT WAS THE STORY

THE END.

I think such a talented author deserves a nice zombie present for Christmas. Unfortunately, most of the zombie stuff out there isn't exactly child-suitable.

I was so tickled when I saw the title of the story. I'm the biggest wussy you could ever find, but I have a real fondness for zombie books, and the only zombie movie I've ever made it through, "Night of the Living Dead." The rest are too scary for me. Wussy, I tell ya.

I wonder how hard it would be to adapt that bear design...

Monday stuff.

Look at these cutie-cute pictures I got in the e-mail today...

My in-laws went to Pennsylvania for "Grandparents Day" at my nieces' school. Here's my father-in-law with Evelyn:

And Anna showing off her family picture:

And here are my in-laws with the girls and their grandma on their dad's side, Judy:

It's so fun to see the girls in their schoolrooms. Seems like a really nice thing for the school to do, too, they had a little program and everything.

Todd is in North Carolina till Wednesday on his bi-annual windsurfing trip with the Central Ohio Wind Surfers (COWS.) However, it doesn't sound like there's much windsurfing going on--no wind. He took his kayak, so he's been floating around trying to kayak fish, but not having much luck at that, either. He fished from 8 to 5 yesterday and didn't catch anything but a sunburn. Still, he's not at work, so I imagine that's all that really counts.

I've been doing some cleaning and straightening (still have lots to do, though) and some scrapbooking. And some reading. I was watching The Colbert Report last week, and he was talking about how all the pundits, on both sides, go on and on about how McCain and Obama have such compelling personal stories.

So Stephen started comparing Obama and McCain to Shakespeare characters (Obama = Hamlet; McCain = Macbeth--this is all extremely tongue-in-cheek, of course) and he brought on this Shakespeare scholar from Harvard to talk about it. At the end of the segment, he held up the expert's book, and--no lie--I had just gotten it in the mail from PaperbackSwap that very day!

The book is called Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. Books about Shakespeare are always interesting because so much of what we "know" about him is pure speculation. What this author does is link historical events and personal experiences that probably occurred in Shakespeare's life to similar events and experiences in his poems and plays...speculating about the ways that Shakespeare must have taken what he saw and felt and used that in his creations.

It's a very readable book, and so interesting. In some ways the speculation is frustrating, because it runs against so much of what historical writing and biographical writing should be, but since it's unavoidable in this situation, it makes the character of Shakespeare that much more compelling. He's fascinating because we know so little about him, I guess is what I'm stabbing at.

Since Todd is gone, I'm taking the opportunity to not cook, or at least, to cook very little. I made a giant pot of soup on Saturday and have been eating it for a couple of days, and tonight I'm going to make another giant pot of soup and eat that till he comes home Wednesday night. And since he's not here, I get to eat stuff he doesn't like, like chili with lots of beans!