We have successfully moved to our temporary home and so this morning I'm more or less back to my usual routine. My temporary office is quite grand - it's the master bedroom of the house, and from my desk I have a peekaboo view of Portage Bay. Whatever I end up with as an office in our remodelled house won't be so impressive.

Speaking of remodels, Sara and I spend the long weekend grieving for our old house design and working on a new one. We have slashed and burned and now the remodel, which once had added about 1500 square feet to the house, is now adding maybe 300 square feet. The second floor is gone, and we're planning to raid the garage for Sara's homeschooling space. Such is reality, and we hope this is enough to salvage the project. It was never really about the added space, it was about updating the plumbing, electrical, and heating systems and making the existing space work better for our homeschooling and homeofficing family. And we think that's still possible, though we've learned not to underestimate the cost of any part of a remodel.

In other news we have sold Skeeter, our beloved but ultimately undersized Casita travel trailer. We just weren't camping as often as we had hoped, and when we do want to we can rent our friend's Casita. If you've been following my life you know Sara and I once spent nine months travelling around the country in a pickup-trailer combination, and it's a life we love. We hope to return to it when practible.

I sent Unshelved Volume 1 to the printer last night for its second printing. I fixed dozens of small errors from the first book and hundreds of errors introduced when we had to rescan about four months of original art due to a hard drive crash. Backup often. Glad to have it done, and predictably nervous about the end result. Many, many thanks to my friend Rob, our unbelievably talented tester and proofreader.

Here's a very positive review of What Would Dewey Do?. There are some critical comments about my art, and rightly so. I'm still learning the craft. By the way, there is mention that the art could be reduced farther. We have considered 4 strips/page for future books. It would save paper and cost. Let us know what you think.