We had a nice first birthday party planned Saturday for Caroline, right up until the snow started to hit. At that point we started calling anyone coming from outside the immediate area (including my parents and siblings) and told them to stay home. Good thing we did, considering the horrific conditions on the road.

However, with pretty much every other event in the area being canceled or just plain inaccessible, we had a nice turnout from the neighbors. And naturally Caroline wasn’t remotely disappointed, because people say “Happy Birthday” to her and she just says smiles and says “Ma.” (She has three words in her vocabulary: “Ma,” “Mama,” and “Mamamamama.” The first two are directed to Kathleen if Kath is hodling her; the third is what she shouts when she wants Kath to come back into the room. If I’m holding her and say, “Say Dada,” she smiles and then hits me in the face. So I’m taking a different approach and trying to teach her to identify me as “Not the mama.”)

So folks came and Caroline got her own piece of cake which she obligingly smeared all over her face, thus permitting adorable pictures that we can trot out to show her prom date some years hence. That’s part of a parent’s job: Coming up with new and interesting ways to make their children wish they had someone else for parents.

PAD

If you take several cats to the groomers and have them bathed, when they come home they will not recognize each other because their scents are different. They will hiss and snarl and treat each other like strangers until their natural scents come through. Wouldn’t it be interesting if human beings were the same way? That every time you came out of the shower, people you live with would recoil and say things like, “Who are you?! What are you doing in my husband’s bathrobe?!” and hiss at you and attack you. And the only way you could convince them to back off was to whiz on the carpet and have them smell it so they’d know it’s you.

I think that would be interesting.

PAD

Caroline Helen David, the Cutest Baby in the World (TM) was born during a hellacious snow storm on December 5, 2002.

It is exactly one year later, she’s one year older, and we’re about to embark on a three day snow storm.

Coincidence?

PAD

Once again, in the proof of the power of the blog, the cover to Fallen Angel #10.

Why so powerful? Well, if everybody visiting this site buys a copy, then we have pretty big sales figures. Whether this is a comment on the power of the web or the softness of comic sales in general is left to the reader…

…type in the words “Miserable Failure” (include the quotes) and then hit “I Feel Lucky.”

And don’t come bìŧçhìņg to me about it if you don’t like the result.

PAD

When I did the on-line chat with the Star Trek Book Club a week ago, I was sooooo careful. Remember what I’ve said here in the past? That I say something about Star Trek that’s perfectly innocent, it winds up getting twisted around, and šhìŧ falleth from above like the gentle rains upon my hapless head?

So one questioner asked about the likelihood of my writing for “Enterprise.” And I’m thinking, How can I respond to this in as neutral a manner as possible? Particularly since I’m waiting to see how the season progresses before firming up an opinion on the series itself? And I replied (this is a paraphrase, I don’t have the exact text in front of me) that it wasn’t tremendously likely, because most series TV is staff written. And I had no desire to move to the West Coast under any circumstance. I didn’t want to disrupt my life or, even more importantly, my family’s life. But in the unlikely event that “Enterprise” wanted to hire me freelance so I could stay here in New York, I’d be up for that. (I didn’t go into detail, but I can say from experience that moving to Montreal for weeks at a time in order to oversee “Space Cases” was so stressful on my family that I’ve no desire to repeat it.)

So what’s the headline in “Trek Today?”

“DAVID WON’T MOVE WEST FOR ENTERPRISE.”

Which, of course, makes it sound like they offered me a gig and I thought they were such a crap show that I refused. “Angel,” “Charmed,” I’m there, but “Enterprise?” Eeeewwww, cooties.

Now fortunately enough they quote from the interview and the full context is there. But the headline steers the perception, plus if someone is skimming, it’s the only thing they remember.

So if you happen to read someone on line saying, “Peter David thought Enterprise is so bad that he turned down a staff job,” now you’ll know where it comes from, and why life in the public eye can be fraught with excitement.

PAD