Update: I've decided to stay with this very nice red and gray motif for now. It matches the colors of not only my own undergrad school, but of Rick's alma mater as well. And, without my having noticed this beforehand, I seem to have chosen the same color scheme as Samer's. My apologies for a few possibly messy links. I'm not the world's best HTML housekeeper, and these things always to require a bit of a shakedown e-cruise -- for one thing, the cute little arrows next to the links work great under Netscape 7.2, but just don't seem to be fully reproducible on my own favorite browser, Safari. Oh, and a big BugHouse welcome to newly linked friends. If you're a reader of this blog and would like a link, just let me know. If I've linked to you and you'd rather I didn't, let me know that too and I'll discreetly dispose of the link.

The adventure continues. Please stand by.

Okay, here's the new look of the day. I first tried a slightly girlier motif today, just to balance the testosterone, but it was ugly as hell when combined with Safari; if it had been a hat, it would have been found on Minnie Pearl. Also, my apologies to everyone for yesterday's loss of archived comments, but I'm afraid that SquawkBox and I are going through a rough patch and just don't understand each other any more. At least Blogger has a comments feature of its own.

In other news, I was asked a few days ago, for the first time ever, whether I had grandchildren. It was in a local Radio Shack store, by a solicitous clerk who noticed that I was looking at (a.) family-oriented cell phone plans and (b.) stocking-stuffer-sized electronic games. I know that this kind of remark is considered to be a gaffe ("Dude! Are you insinuating that I don't look, oh, about 22 any more?") but I thought it was funny, and technically I am a great-aunt, which is close enough. (The actual grandparents of my great-niece are younger than I am, anyway.)

Yup, I could just picture my alternate-universe self as a grand-anything, out Christmas shopping. ("I got her one of these adorable Anarchist Barbies. And I'm hoping the permits can be expedited so that she can have her very own bullet-ant colony in time for the holidays.")

As you may have noticed, the Bug House is in a state of transition, visually speaking. I'm going to try out some new looks, and only then worry about whether and how to re-post my links. Actually, I rather like this style, even if some of the previously posted graphic links stick out and look funny. (Maybe they just look interesting. Hell if I know.)

Onward and bugward.

Because of all the zooming around that Rick and I have been doing lately, I have a lot of catching up to do. Yes, there have been some extremely happy occasions in our lives lately. Among them:

* Meeting up for a quick lunch with friends in Columbus, and then spending a few days with a great couple in Maryland (longtime friends of Rick's) while Rick attended a conference and I kept buzzing over to the Smithsonian museums and the National Gallery of Art. Thanks, Paul, Helen, and kiddos, for the hospitality, not to mention the continuous intellectual stimulation and the awesome Korean food!

* Having lunch in D.C. with Tim, Tricia, and Justin. BTW, guys, I am going to TrashMasters, due to a last-minute invitation that was way too good to turn down!

* Helping my mom get some long-needed home improvements under way.

* Watching my niece actually enjoy experiments with the chemistry set that we gave to her and her brother some time back.

I'm trying to get back to work now, on some projects that need to be wrapped up soon. The Bug House is now so chaotic that I actually briefly mislaid my hardcover copy of this book. This is a bit like forgetting where you parked your Humvee. It's just too damned big to get lost!