"Neil Gaiman? What are you doing in my falafel?"

Outside it's raining - not hard, but continually - and the wind is alternately gusting and howling. Things that shouldn't be blowing over are blowing over, and I am less inclined to walk the dogs than I ought to be.

Cabal is walking better each day. Lola (who no longer looks like she did in http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/06/not-dead-yet.html) is about eight months old and as big as he is, or almost, and bounds through the undergrowth like a special effect of a sped-up weightless rocket-dog. I do not think this makes Cabal happy.

I never wrote about Lola, did I? I should, and will, but not today. But for those who are wondering... we adopted her through Petfinder.com, and we got her to be company for Cabal (we seemed so much happier when we had Pearl staying here). She's growing up, is terrifyingly smart, and in photos you can easily distinguish her from Cabal because his nose is pink while hers is black.

Hang on. Let me find a photo from the day when Amanda and I drove down to the Wisconsin Dells and got her...

Hm. It already seems impossible that Lola was ever that small. Or that it was that warm here or that the trees had leaves on them.

(For anyone going "How beautiful they are. I wish I had a White German Shepherd," right now Petfinder.com needs homes for 193 White German Shepherds. Do not get a German Shepherd (of any colour) unless you have lots of room for it, space for it to run, and are willing to put on your coat and boots and head back out into the wind and rain and walk it... sigh....)

...

This week my ARTHUR episode is up at the PBS site. It's only watchable from the US or with a US IP address, and I do not know how long it will stay up. But right now, you can see me and the Falafel in:

http://to.pbs.org/8Y8A4P

And Steve Fritz talks to me and PBS about it at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5925092/an_animated_conversation_with_neil.html?cat=2
...

The next email came in back in May.

Now, I am very squeamish on all eyeball-related matters, and after I clicked on the links and looked at them, I thought these photos were beautiful, so I asked Alexx if he'd mind me putting them up on the blog. He said yes. Which was just about the point where the blog went onto a sort-of hiatus.

Today he wrote and reminded me (thank you, Alexx...) and I take great pleasure in putting them up here.

I know lots of people get tattoos based on your work -- but how many people get new eyeballs? My wife Kestrell, who is blind, and to whom I read the entirety of Sandman early in our relationship, finally convinced her ocularist to make her Delirium eyes.

I documented the whole process with pictures on my LJ. Some of the pictures may be not for the squeamish, but the whole thing is very educational. And at the end, Delirium eyes!

http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/287659.html
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/287849.html
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/288231.html
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/288472.html
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/289581.html

...

I was thrilled to see Stephen King endorsing the instant All Hallow's Read tradition at http://www.stephenking.com/news.html (thank you, Steve), and to see the Washington Post blog take it up (and ask for #booksthatfreakedmeout on Twitter).

I finished reading Mary Ann in Autumn (here's the Harpers page for it, with lots of extras). It's as sharp and as timely and as humane as all of the Tales of the City books, and a ball that Armistead Maupin tossed into the air in the very first of the books finally comes down here. (And I went and checked my copy of Sure of You to see if he had done what I thought he had done, and he had.)

It goes on sale next week, but you can read the first six chapters at http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061470882.

Labels: Armistead Maupin, Arthur on PBS, Delirium eyes, L-0-L-A Lola, petfinder