What Was I Thinking?

In a bit of a scheduling oops, back when I didn't know what else would be going on with my life this week, I agreed to volunteer for the summer music and arts day camp at the church this week. So, on the week that I have a book coming out and need to be doing PR kind of stuff and while I need to get a book written, and worse, coming off of several days being rather sick, I have to spend all morning at the church Monday through Thursday of this week. I have the second graders, and all I really have to do is get them from one session to the next and keep them from being too insane along the way. Fortunately, I have a lot of teen helpers, and they were all on the choir trip earlier this summer, so they know me (I got an enthusiastic hug from one of the Crazies when she saw me). I don't know any of these kids, but one is the son of one of my ballet friends. It wasn't too bad today, though I'm not quite at 100 percent. I mostly had to make sure they washed their hands after the craft project, which involved molding dough, and keep them from killing each other with the rhythm band instruments. There are a lot of boys in this group, so anything that can be weaponized will be weaponized.

The group dynamics are always interesting in this sort of thing. I'm amazed at how easily boys make friends. The girls are a little aloof and cling to the other girls they already know without being too welcoming to newcomers. The boys were immediately clustered in a circle, talking about lizards they'd seen in their yards, and as new boys arrived, they'd widen the circle to include the newcomers, especially if they had a good lizard story to tell.

Speaking of lizards and other creatures, the season premiere for Grimm is tonight. Yes, on a Monday, and yes, this early. Apparently, they're trying to capture any holdover audience from the Olympics. The episode will also be repeated in the usual Friday timeslot, in case you forget or didn't realize that they were doing the Monday thing for a few weeks.

In case you'd forgotten or just somehow showed up here, Book 5 in the Enchanted, Inc. series, Much Ado About Magic, will be released Wednesday. Just a couple more days! And then remember that book 6 is coming in October, so you don't even have to wait that long to find out what happens next.

And then there's this, a trailer for Terry Pratchett's next book. It looks like he's doing Dickens, with Dodger. I'm mildly irked because it sounds similar to part of a story line I have in mind for a future project. Mine has a lot of other stuff going on that I doubt will be at all similar, but it still has enough similarities that I might look like I'm following a trend. Then again, in publishing these days, it takes clout like Pratchett's to start a trend. They aren't keen on anything that's too different from other stuff.



And now to see if I can get my brain into work mode. I've finally stopped sneezing and sniffling, and I only cough when my throat gets dry. I guess the storms that blew through last night wiped out whatever has been making me miserable.