. Comic .
“Bear Creek Apartments” by Hope Larson & Bryan Lee O’Malley | They’re married (and rather well known artists on the indie comics scene), and I don’t think they usually collaborate, but I enjoyed this short story, the whimsy of it all.

. Art .
Lois van Baarle | a very talented young woman. I used to follow her work on deviantART and just rediscovered her yesterday via a friend’s link on facebook.
Faith Erin Hicks | She’s pretty good for someone who learned to draw just so she could tell her stories. I’ll been following her work for a few years.

. Life .
“The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget” by Kent Nerburn | A story about how the not-so-little things in life really matter.

I just figured out how to get WordPress 2.3 installed and functioning on my server. Today I logged into my WP account to be confronted with a note on my interface informing me that a new version of WordPress was available (which I already knew about) and to “Please update now.” What’s the deal. Will the older version of WP stop working after a certain point?

It’s all just so tedious. Well, at least I know what to do this time.

.

Here’s a seriously overexposed photo that I took this evening in the elevator of Mobile Infirmary while leaving after visiting my great-aunt who’s been admitted there this past week. She was in good spirits, and it’s the first time she’s been the hospital in her 84 years of life. That’s pretty amazing. Just today, I heard the story for the first time about how she was born a month premature after her mother (my great-grandmother) went into labor as a result of being frightened by a streetcar that nearly hit her. Yes, a streetcar.

Her mother had not made any plans for her to have the baby in Mobile, as she wasn’t due. She had made arrangements to have the baby in Stateline, MS, where her family was from, and it was the family custom, I suppose, to have the baby wherever your mother was. So, she had to send my grandmother, who was about 5 years old at the time, across the street to go fetch the West Indian mid-wife to come and deliver the baby. Needless to say, the baby survived, and weighed less than five pounds. She didn’t go to the hospital though, and has been fine ever since.

I guess I come from pretty good stock.