Yay Ken!

Self-righteously, I did get a lot of work done yesterday, and today I smoothed over two chapters and some notes and got them all sent off to Teresa. I also ran some errands and went to the gym, and came home and showered, and joined Twitter (as cyvarwydd—feel free to follow me, even though I currently haven't a clue what I'm supposed to be doing with it).

And then things went a wee bit pear-shaped. Due to some health issues, I went all wibbly. I was all set to work on my first CES assignment when…no. No brain, no energy, no nothin’. I did take Afalwen with me as I sat on the sofa and watched reruns of NCIS (which I recorded so I could still blast through commercials), but our Internet access gets wonky in the evenings, so I only got a limited amount of useful stuff done. In between lying down on the sofa….

Then I got the call: Ken won the rally! And he was going to try and make it home tonight! I called him a bit later to request In-n-Out (because I needed red meat in a bad way), and it turned out he had a flat tire. He was unable to get hold of his mom or brother in Orange County, so he ended up calling AAA, and getting home around 1:30 a.m. But he’s home! And he won!

Now I shall wibble my wibbly self off to bed…

The truth is...

I’d like to be all self-righteous and say I didn’t go to the Queensrÿche show with Ken tonight because I had work to do. But I can’t. The truth is, I didn’t go because I have defective eyeballs.

See, there’s a rally in San Diego tomorrow morning, and it made no sense for us to drive to Hollywood, drive home, and then have Ken need to turn around and leave four hours later. The only other option was to take two vehicles, and have him head south after the show while I came back home.

Except I can’t drive at night.

I mean, I can. Nobody’s told me I can’t. But I know just how poor my vision is at night (and at twilight, when it’s almost worse), how lights cause huge halos and half-blind me. It’s not just a case of not being able to read street signs. It’s a case of not being able to see if someone walked in front of the car. Coming home from the show Wednesday night, I couldn’t see the cement barrier in the middle of the freeway due to the oncoming headlights. (Oh, I knew it was there, and I could drive without hitting it, but still.)

So, I did the mature, adult thing and stayed home. Ken managed to sell my ticket, so at least we didn’t eat that cost.

But I hate doing the mature, adult thing. It sucks. Don’t wanna. ::stamps feet::

Now I should get some more work done, because then I can at least pretend to be a little self-righteous...

Want me to write you a story...?

I mentioned a while back that I’d signed a contract for a freelance gig, and I just got my first assignment as well as confirmation that I can advertise the site and my involvement.

I’m writing for Custom Erotica Source, which supplies customized erotica stories for clients. In other words, you send in the type of story you want, the characters (you’re the star, generally), and any specifics you want mentioned, and one of the writers writes you a story It can be romantic or steamy, short or long, etc. CES binds the stories into pretty handmade booklets.

I’ll be writing under the name Kendra Wayne, to keep these stories separate from my other erotica/erotic romance work. Yes, another pen name! (One can never have too many, you know.) So if you ever want to order a story, ask for me!

A conversation with my husband

I was making Pad Thai; he was doing dishes.

Ken (out of the blue): You should write a murder mystery…

Me (mentally): Um. Where can this be going?

Ken: …about an actor who looks like he commited suicide with a starter pistol.

Me: Um. Sadly, something like that actually happened…

Ken: Yeah. It was some lame 80s show—

Me: Hey! I liked that show! The female lead was hot. [brief pause] I can’t remember the name of the show, though. Or her name.

[Thirty second later]

Me: But his name was Jon-Erik Hexum.

Ken (fondly): You really are special, aren’t you?

(It was Cover Up, and the female lead was Jennifer O’Neill. But I had to look that up. Honest.)

'Night!

Screw it. I’m tired. I’m going to bed. I don’t care if it’s not even 11 p.m. yet.

Sorry ‘bout those pigs that just flew by your window….

Photos update

For some reason, the photos aren't leading to my Flickr site, so here are the links to the two sets:

Birthday Parts I and II

Meerkats!

Birthday, Part III

Sunday

Meerkat day! Meerkat day! Squee!

My present that morning was another in the Audubon birds of prey series: a California condor! (Actually, it’s a special edition bird, not part of the birds of prey series. Details…)

Morgana and Brian arrived and we all poured our underslept bodies into the car and headed east into the desert. We had lunch at a Ruby’s Diner because it was close and reasonable, not because of any great desire to eat at a Ruby’s Diner. My bleu cheese burger had some icky bits in it, I’m sad to say, but the fries I stole off Morgana’s plate were yummy. Then we killed a few minutes at Hadley Orchards where, it turns out, Morgana and Brian had their first date. (They had date shakes.)

On the way to the meerkat sanctuary, Morgana and I practiced our inner squees, as we assumed it would bad to vocalize them and startle the meerkats. Essentially, we did some out-loud squees to try and get them out of our system.


And then we were there! We were met by Pam Bennett-Wallberg, Director of Fellow Earthings Wildlife Center, who immediately said I looked like Stockard Channing, which I took as a huge compliment. She proceeded to tell us a funny story about Stockard, who’s the new narrator of Meerkat Manor and who’d come to the sanctuary to meet the meerkats and managed to get her rented Porsche stuck… Heh.

Now, you have to realize, I’d been waiting for this for a year. The deal is, you donate $100 to the center, and as a perk of membership, you and up to three other people get to spend 2 hours with the meerkats. What I didn’t realize when I tried to schedule this for my birthday last year was that there was a 6–12 month waiting list. So I scheduled it for this year’s birthday. I tried not to jitter and show too much impatience as Pam showed us around the facility, made us signed release forms, etc. :-)

There were three enclosures, two with two meerkats and one with three. Meerkats can be very territorial, apparently. To pick them up, all you had to do was offer them food…in the form of live, wriggling mealworms. Thank gods we didn’t have to handle live bugs! Morgana and I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Pam also praised Morgana and I for not shrieking in high-pitched voices over the meerkats, which means our practice ahead of time had been a wise thing. She also was impressed that Morgana didn’t leap and scream when a couple of the meerkats “fought” for worms in her lap. Morgana laughed and pointed out that she had experience with crazed cats. A couple of little meerkats snarling adorable little meerkat snarls wasn’t going to bother her!


Anyway, Pam thought we were the coolest people ever, which was fun. She wanted to know all about the SCA and costuming and history, and my writing, and the fact that Ken and I had been to Africa, and the other animals we’d made a point of seeing (cheetahs, birds of prey, wolves, etc.), and kept commenting on how interesting we all were. She had us talking so much, we really didn’t get to hear all of her stories about Africa. She did talk about a book she’d written and a documentary she’d considered doing.

The meerkats, though. Head. Asplode. With Cuteness. They were…I’m going to do a crap job of describing it because they were just so freaking adorable. First up were Remi (F) and Suri (M) (no related to TomKat’s daughter). One of them wasn’t much for being held, but the other was. None of them specifically came over to be held or picked up, per se, but most of them were fine with being scooped up while they snorfled your other hand for tasty wriggly mealworms. We sat on low benches with our legs out, and held our hands by our ankles, and the one who liked to come up would run up our legs as we drew our hands up.


Next up was Kendi (F) and Rafiki (M). One of them wanted your hand flat (good for photo ops), whereas for the other, you fisted your hand and he or she would pry at your fingers to get to those yummy wriggling treats you were hiding.

Pam said that because these meerkats don’t have to deal with a lot of the problems live ones do (foraging for food, dodging predators, etc.), they can get bored—so they love having visitors. Plus they were smart, and knew exactly what it meant when we walked towards their enclosures—food! Between eating, they’d run around, scrabble in the dirt (they didn’t go into any full-on burrowing, probably because they knew they might miss out on food if they went too far), sit up on their little comfy chairs and look so cute you couldn’t stand it, scramble across our legs, cuddle with each other…


Our final stop was to meet Jengo (M), Nalo (M), and Bara (F). I swiftly twigged that Bara had clearer markings (not quite spots, but not quite stripes, either) than the other two. Turns out most people don’t even notice that! Go me! She’s from a different part of Africa. So she’s the only one of all of them that I can ID in the pictures. The rest of them have subtle stripes, whereas her colors are more pronounced.


I’m pretty sure it was Nalo who, after he’d eaten his fill, took up residence in the corner of the enclosure next to me. He was sitting up, looking around, checking things out, looking adorable. And I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I wanted to. Very, very slowly and carefully, I stuck out my forefinger. And he booped the end of my finger with his dirty little nose. (They all had dirty little noses! Squee!) So I reached out again, very, very slowly and carefully, and just barely brushed against the hairs on his little belly.

He was fine with that, so I did it again, with a little scritching. And again, and again, my brain dissolving into so much mush as I gave a meerkat belly scritches. He also let me scritch under his chin twice. I nearly died from the adorableness of it. I’m getting all squee-y again just typing this!

I managed to get one picture of myself doing this, and Ken got videos. In my picture his nictating membranes are over his eyes, so he looks like a little zombie meerkat. (Zombie meerkats! Squee!)


Eventually we had to go, after petting the dogs and the cat and thanking Pam profusely. What an amazing experience. Totally worth the wait! I’m so glad that I try to do something for my birthday when I can.

We stopped at The Old Spaghetti Factory on the way home, because nothing was going to make my birthday complete better than angel hair pasta with mizithra cheese and browned butter. (Well. There are a couple of other things. But Styx didn’t actually have a show this weekend.)

And then we came home, and slept for a long, long time.

Monday

Pretty much all I remember of Monday is finding a copy of Charles de Lint’s Tapping the Dream Tree as my next present. Oh, and when we ordered pizza that night, because it was my actual birthday, I got a stuffed-crust pepperoni-lover’s with onions and extra cheese. Urp.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled journal. At least 'til I get my write-up of the Ren Faire finished...

Birthday, Part II

Saturday

This morning’s present was a DVD of Grosse Point Blank, one of my favorite movies. I can’t believe I didn’t own it already!

We had a quick breakfast, then did the Queen Mary’s Ghosts and Legends Tour, the tickets for which were part of our package deal. (We also got tickets to the Aquarium of the Pacific, the LA Zoo, the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and an LA Galaxy soccer game, plus a coffee table book about the Queen Mary, a 50% off coupon to a Best Western in San Diego, and a signed photo of a Radio Disney DJ. Sweet deal!) The tour was a production with special effects rather than an actual tour of the haunted areas of the ship, so it was expectedly cheesy, but it was still fun. Since most of it was low-lit and I have abysmal night vision, I probably missed a few things.

At one point, they told us about a crewman who was playing chicken back and forth between an automatic door and got cut in half. I turned to Ken and, sotto voce, asked, “Does that mean he haunts two rooms at the same time?” Hee.

After that, we went across the way to the Aquarium of the Pacific, because, you know, they have otters! They have moon jellies and crystal jellies and weedy sea dragons and leafy sea dragons and otters! We managed to hit the otter feeding time and I just about asploded from the cuteness. (I want to do their behind-the-scenes otter experience next year, which includes feeding the otters.)




Lots and lots of squee, but I also got tired (stupid cold) and had to sit for a bit. The Aquarium of the Pacific has astonishingly uncomfortable benches that don’t seem to have been constructed for human beings. If you try to lean back, you pretty much sliiiiide right off them. Since it was a Saturday, the place was swarming, although we were highly amused by the barely walking toddler wearing an AC/DC t-shirt.

Full of oceanic goodness, we made our way back to Manhattan Beach (with me being geeky and taking pictures of the Goodyear blimp on the way) and met up with a bunch of our Styxfan peeps for a birthday dinner of sorts: Nanci, Lenny, Monk, Cindi, Sheri, Karin, Fran, and Thom. Nanci, Lenny, and Monk brought me presents even though they weren’t supposed to, and others brought cards, and I was just happy to spend time with my friends.

I’d randomly picked a restaurant using the powers of the GPS on my iPhone, and although the deli was small, the portions were big and mouthwatering. I had a roast beef and brie panini (nomnomnom), Ken had a big salad (he let me steal his goat cheese), and we split some seasoned fries with a cajun mayo type dipping sauce. Then the waitress brought me birthday dessert! Some kind of cookie/brownie thing drizzled with chocolate and caramel sauces and topped with whipped cream. I forced everybody to eat some, because I was already stuffed. But it was goooood.

Then it was back down the street for another night at Pancho’s, where we met Louis and Angela. Tyla and her mom and brother showed up for a short time as did Tani and Johnny, and Maria joined us, too. Ken and I split up and sat at different tables for different views, which confused Taylor (who ended up sitting at Ken’s table). Between the second and third sets, Ken brought in ginormous cupcakes from Costco, which I attempted to foist off on all my friends, and then on any drunk person I could make eye contact with. When they asked what the occasion was and I said my birthday, many strangers felt it was then appropriate to wish me a happy birthday and hug me. I’d had several glasses of wine, so I had no problem with that.

(Sheri got a great photo of me and cupcakes, but I can't figure out how to link to it on her Facebook page. Grr.)

The band once again rocked, and Taylor’s guest vocals on two songs were gorgeous, and Jimmy, the lead singer, announced it was my and another patron’s birthday, although almost nobody heard him. Ken got his timpani mallets signed, which was very cool.

At one point late in the evening, I’d turned to say something to Nanci, and suddenly there was a Todd drumstick wedged in the crook of my elbow. Apparently it had slipped out of his hand, because others saw him turn and look at Koko and laugh. All I knew was that I’d gotten a birthday drumstick! Whee!


We headed home after that, arriving at 3 a.m., and got about four hours’ sleep because we had to get up bright and early the next day for…

Birthday, Part I

So, my birthday weekend. A quick note before I start: Click on any of the pictures in these entries and you’ll be taken to the full set on my Flickr site.

Now, on to the festivities!

Friday

Since we were spreading my birthday over several days, Ken spread my presents over several days. Friday morning I awoke to a promo photo of Lawrence circa 1985 (Strange Animal era)—rock that mullet!

We went down the coast (gorgeous, with the sun sparkling on the water, but no dolphins—did they not get the memo that it was my birthday weekend?) to Santa Monica. I’d had a light tea at The Tudor House before, and I’m happy to say that their full afternoon tea was also excellent: finger sandwiches (natch), salad, scones with proper Devon cream (heaven!) and jam, and petit fours. We opted for a Yorkshire tea blend that was just lovely.


We took a picture in front of the British mailbox in the store, but you can’t see it…


We also browsed in the store, but didn’t buy anything—I like to patronize our local British shop in Ventura whenever I can.

After that, we strolled around Santa Monica hand-in-hand in the sunshine. We needed new cover screens for our iPhones, so we went to the Apple store, where the Most! Enthusiastic! Employee! Ever! checked us out. (He high-fived me when I said it was my birthday weekend.)


We hit some traffic heading further south, but got to the Queen Mary with no problem. I’d been on her once before, about four and a half years ago, for a cocktail party, so I hadn’t really seen much of her. Our room was surprisingly spacious, and they did a great job upgrading while keeping most of the Art Deco décor. Can’t say I was impressed by the obviously modern bedspread and curtains, though—not only were they completely and utterly wrong, they clashed with each other.



For example, they kept the original bathtub knobs, which include options for hot and cold sea water. Sadly, they no longer work. Why would someone want to bathe in hot sea water? Wouldn’t one just then be sticky?


After a shower and fluff-and-buff, we were back on the road to Pancho’s, where Styx’s drummer Todd Sucherman would be playing with local band Day After Daze. We met up with Sheri, Karin, Nanci, Lenny, Monk (Nanci and Lenny’s child, a little stuffed monkey), Cindi, Todd, and Angie, and later Fran and Thom. (I’m terrified that I’m forgetting someone…) We ate yummy Mexican food in the bar (I had a shrimp and crab quesadilla) while waiting (and waiting, and waiting…) for the band. (We got there early to get tables up front, but the band didn’t go on ‘til 10 p.m.)


Between sets I had the chance to say hello to Taylor Mills, Todd’s wife, and get her CD signed. Alas, although I took a picture of her and Sheri with Sheri’s camera, I didn’t get a picture of Taylor and myself! Next time…. She’s a sweetheart and we had a great time chatting.


Amusingly, when I popped on to Facebook to update my status, I saw that my newest “friend” was The Fabulous Koko Powell, Day After Daze’s bassist! I told him that later and he high-fived me. (It was a high-five kind of weekend.)

The band finished up around 2 a.m. and we scooted back to the Queen Mary and crashed hard, because we had a busy day ahead of us…

Renaissance Faire 2009

The pin on my shoulder is my birthday present from Morgana and Brian.  :-)

Heh. Oops.

I really was loopy on Friday, because I posted my good/bad entry w/o finishing it, and my Spells jar paragraph made no sense because I have one! I’ve updated the entry, so you can read the whole thing now…

Later I will update about Ren Faire (some fun pictures, too!) and the Forever Vinyl show, but that should happen after I finish my birthday update, which should happen after I get some work done today. So. Off with me.

The bad vs. the good

Things that are making me grumpy:

Stupid cold. It hasn’t gotten really bad, but it’s annoying. Can’t breathe through my nose w/o nasal spray. Can’t do much for an extended period of time w/o feeling exhausted. Etc. My productivity this week has been abysmal.

Writing. It’s going soooo slowly and I have soooo much to do. See above re: “Stupid cold” for the reason. Writing with a sloggy brain is just sloggy. And kind of oogy.

My lovely long and picture-filled journal entry about my weekend. Again, see above. It’s…half written, maybe?

Exercise. See above, yet again. Grrr…

Things that are making me happy:

I’ve been getting the proposals for Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess in the mail. It’s a lot of work, because I have to research each editor and customize the letter to her. Some editors have recently bought work similar to PUM, or have said they’re looking for similar things in recent interviews. Others, not so much. But I’m still getting a few out each day—plus I got two more Out of the Frying Pan proposals in the mail. (I’ll be going through the old ones after PUM is done and re-querying a bunch.)

My Spells jar! For years now, I’ve been looking for a ceramic jar that says “Spells” on it. I saw one…I have no idea how long ago, or where, or when, but I remember that they existed, but when I started looking for one, pfft. Well, a few months ago I somehow ended up looking at someone’s Flickr photos from a Ren faire, and saw a booth of jars. So I e-mailed my friend Sara, who’s big in the faire in Phoenix, and asked her to keep an eye out for one for me. (This was before I knew we were going to faire this year.) She found a ceramic merchant who had jars, but not a Spells jar, and asked him, and he offered to make one! And it arrived today, and it is perfect! It’s black but has purple-y sparkles on it, and I’m dying to know if she told the merchant that purple is my favorite color or whether it was just sheer fate. Anyway, I’ll take a picture soon. Perfect Spells jar, for the win!

Faire! I haven’t been to a Ren faire in years and years, largely because I do SCA, so why got to faire? We were supposed to go to Northern Faire last year with Morgana and Brian and Laurel and John, but a Styx concert and Ken’s work intervened. I didn’t even think I had anything to wear (and Brian didn’t want to do pirate, so Morgana said she wasn’t going to do pirate), but I found a green bodice in my garb closet that miraculously fits me, and I have my purple chemise and green and purple skirts and fun Celtic-y jewelry and pins that say “Everyone is watching you look at my chest” and “Careful, men have suffocated between these,” and I’m really looking forward to this tomorrow! (My cold notwithstanding. Reminder to self: Walk slowly, and sit down a lot.)

Our slow cooker. I hate to cook, and Ken and I are the types to suddenly look up from our work, announce hunger, and then realize we haven’t prepped anything. Cooking just takes too damn long, you know? But with the slow cooker, if we actually get up in time and put stuff in it, it’s like magic! Come supper time, there is food ready to eat! It’s like…like…like going to a restaurant, except we don’t have to put pants on! Tonight it’s a salsa chicken to shred for tacos (dayum, it was good!), and Sunday we’ll use the leftovers to make soup (in the slow cooker). Sing the nomnom song with me!

The hot tub. Ahhhh…

Nyquil. Say no more.

As usual, the good outweighs the bad, and now I’m off to sleep the drug-filled, dream-weird sleep of the Nyquil damned!

The good vs the morning

The good news is that I didn’t have to report to jury duty on my birthday.

The bad news is that I have to be there at 8-effing-o’clock in the morning tomorrow. Argh.

But I’ll take Afalwen and get some work done!

Speaking of work, must get back to it… I got some PUM proposals in the mail today, and now I have to get a short story back in circulation, then finish another short story.

---

Currently Reading: Dogs and Goddesses, Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich
Lately Listened To: Hm. Be interesting to see what I choose…
Recently Watched: Supernatural (I suspect it’s very, very wrong that I’m thinking certain thoughts about Castiel…)

My birthday weekend, in one picture

The plan is to get all the pictures uploaded to Flickr today and do a full write-up of my Most Incredible Birthday Weekend, but for now, here's a teaser:

But who's typing?

So, I’ve got a freelance writing blog in my RSS feed on Google Reader, and every Monday it lists all the freelance writing and editing gigs it culls from other places—all the Craigslists, for example.

Today, there’s one that says “Ghost Blog Writer Needed.” And when you’ve got a brain like mine, that goes in sharply sideways into a potentially really interesting idea. (OTOH, can ghosts type? Wouldn’t a ghost be looking for a live person to put together the ghost’s blog? Which, incidentally, is a throwaway line in my Ghosted manuscript …)

I want to have intimate relations with Joss Whedon's brain

Well, we were going to go to King’s Hunt today, even though Ken got home at 5 p.m. last night. By late last night, though, he realized he was coming down with a cold… So we’ve spent most of today curled up in front of the TV. (We’re now caught up on Dollhouse, which has had some jaw-dropping twists and turns, plus a couple of the funniest lines I’ve heard in a long time. I ::heart:: Joss Whedon so very much!)

Now, though, I’m off to the grocery store for the fixings for chicken soup/stew, pesto pizza, and ice cream, among other things. Joy.

And now that our Internet access seems to be working again, I’ve got to get all those PUM proposals mailed!

Reunited...and it feels so good

Ken’s home! Yay! He arrived at about 5 p.m., after getting a new front tire yesterday in El Paso and a new back tire this morning in Phoenix. (Sara, he would’ve crashed at your place, but he didn’t actually have A Plan until pretty late and didn’t want to bother you.)

So I made salad, pesto tortellini, from TJ’s and sauce for dinner, and we watched How I Met Your Mother and two eps of Castle. We have sooo much on the DVR right now, including the final two eps of Battlestar Galactica. I’ve been doing my best to avoid any Internet or TV Guide spoilers. The fact that our Internet connection has been effed up for the past two days has aided in that.

But I have so much to do! I may spend my regular Sunday afternoon writing fest with fellow writers at CB&TL answering e-mail and sending PUM submissions than actually writing.

Purring under stress. Good lesson to learn.

Yesterday, I learned how to give subcutaneous fluids to a cat. Not something I ever wanted to learn, believe me. Today, with Morgana’s help, I gave Grimoire a full dose. Bless his furry little heart, he took it like a trooper. In fact, he purred, complaining only briefly once or twice. (Morgana is magical about calming cats, which helped wonders.) Just a few more days of that, to flush out the extra calcium in his system that’s been messing him up. (He spent Tuesday night and most of Wednesday at the ER vet.) Still no news on scheduling surgery for him; more on that when I have info. Really. Honest.

Meanwhile, I’m working on a Harlequin Nocturne Briefs novella, since they’re having a pitch contest, and Teresa and I had a good confab on Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess. Proposals will be blanketing New York soon, provided my Internet connection stops freaking out. We also have the next few scenes sussed out. Onwards!

Ken should be home tomorrow. He got a new front tire this morning, but thought his back tire would survive the rest of the trip. Er, not so much. He’s in Phoenix, and tomorrow morning he’ll replace the back tire and come home to me.

Anyway, I’ll post this whenever I have a reliable connection again. Which means, in the magic of time, it will already have happened by the time you read this. Or something like that.

Resurfacing, briefly

Nine short stories in the mail today, plus follow-up queries on two others. Whew. Now, on to blanketing New York with Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess! (And then re-sending Out of the Frying Pan, and then whatever novel is next on my list…)

New record: Story e-mailed 12:46 p.m., rejection received 6:19 p.m.

In other news, Ken will probably be home Thursday (he’s staying with his brother in Texas tonight and leaving tomorrow morning), Grimoire is spending the night at the ER vet, my herbs are not yet dead and I’ve absconded with a bunch of rose geranium clippings (my “payment” for hacking back Morgana’s rose geranium hedge o’doom) that are now soaking in preparation for planting, and Valerian now gives me heart palpitations instead of helping me sleep.

Rockin' out

Nanci finally sent me a copy of this picture from the Styx show at the Anaheim House of Blues. Nanci and her husband have a little monkey named Monk that goes to all the shows, and I managed to get Lawrence's attention at the end to ask him to take a Polaroid of us with Monk. And because Lawrence loves us so much, he obliged.