Audie came by late last night to work on sets for an hour or so. She’s trying to get up to speed for the exam next month, and it’s a good refresher for me, since I have to know all eighty-some sets from yellow on down cold. Eighty? Hold on…. (homina homina), no, 102. Jeebus. And if I somehow manage to pass, next year I get to pick up forty more for silver…

Anyway, it went very well, surprisingly well, even, until her ribs locked up, as they tend to, so we called it an evening, and she crashed over so that she could get in some Bannon time. (We’re “training” her kitten for her until she moves into her apartment this weekend. Yes, that includes the liberal application of a tiny, bright orange squirt gun, known as The Punisher.)

Well, this morning I was a slug. Could have gotten up early, decided “screw that,” and had something like six different dreams, including a dance contest, and before that something else that was either postapocalyptic, or else involved Cthulhu. Not sure. Postapocalyptic dance contest? Sounds Bollywood to me…

So she’s sitting upright in bed with a confused look when I come out in the hallway, and I say “good morning,” but don’t get a response. So I think “she’s sleepwalking again,” and go to wake her up. And Autumn gets this confused look on her face, and says “where’s my hair?”

Oh, shit, where IS her hair? It’s something like eight inches shorter than last night…

I call Anna in while telling her “I’ll go check…” But Anna’s already on it.

Turns out that she’s not merely a death-defyingly cute sleepwalker… she’s a sleepbarber. Did a pretty good job, too, with only one section a little longer than the other, in one of those complicated multilayered “make it shorter but make it look a lot fuller” sort of cuts.

I think this qualifies as a Real-Life Superpower. If I tried to cut my hair while I was asleep, I’d either wind up looking like the deranged scientist from Alien Resurrection in his final scene, or else Boris Karloff…

My twin has a Real-Life SuperPower, too, called “all dogs love me.” What’s yours?

1. Am badly overdue to visit the Bairds, and am consistently failing to find a window.
2. Juggling projects again. “Unmitigated Geekery” being one example. Sewing trousers at lunch breaks. Am still of the opinion that men’s clothing is designed in a slipshod fashion that fits like crap, looks like complete ass, and actually teaches men to be physically stiff and inflexible.
3. We’re creating quite the little Geek Street on Burning Tree Lane. I love my neighborhood, with its nearby park, schools all the way from day-care to junior high, and the tons of little mom-n-pop restaurants. No little lefty bookstores, but Half-Price books is pretty squishy that way. On the other hand, all of the neighborhood’s benefits are the subtle, under-the-radar stuff, so we don’t have any yuppie scum, either: they’re all living in the overpriced chipboard-walled houses crapped out by space aliens in neighborhoods where it takes fifteen minutes to get to the grocery store. If we can keep our locals local, and get a couple of our buddies to relocate our way, we should have quite the colony.
4. It’s my birthday, so I’m 34 now. It’s odd to be just cruising along and suddenly be the center of attention. Embarrassing.
5. Go embarrass Jim over at Lemurland. It’s his birthday.
6. Fall is here! Tonight we’ll have lows in the 60s, and our highs for the rest of the week will be in the high 80s only. You know what this means? Well, besides trying to avoid heatstroke working out? It means yours truly can go to town with an axe and pick, and lay out the watering system for next year’s UberYard. With two years worth of lessons on what will grow here and what won’t, we should definitely be starting to look all Better Homes and Gardens by next spring. Hell of an official birthday present from God: the weather’s finally breaking…

That’s it for now, I think…