Another rainy weekend. I did get in 5 jumps, though. I have 18 jumps and 2 weekends to go for my nice round number.

What sucks about rain are all the earthworms that get washed into our pool. It's not that hard to vacuum them up; they're small and they sink to the bottom. They also die, and that's a waste of a perfectly good earthworm. Stupid earthworms.

Yesterday Jon came into the house cradling a frog, saying "he didn't make it". Turns out the frog leapt into the pool and got sucked into the filter. Jon found him spinning around and around; the filter not strong enough to pull him under, but the frog not strong enough to swim away. Then the frog made a feeble attempt to leap out of Jon's hands, so we put him in the sink and gave him a gentle bath in not-so-chlorinated water. Then Jon took him outside and put him under a tree. Frog wasn't there this morning, so maybe he did make it, after all. Either that or he was an easy target for a hungry predator. Stupid frog.

Last night I was reading a book and all of a sudden I heard this mad twittering coming out of the fireplace. Some bird had gotten caught in the chimney. Because of the stove there is no opening big enough for the bird to fly all the way through; hopefully sometime in the night he flew back the way he came. Stupid bird.

The book I was reading was The Keep, a pulpy horror novel by F. Paul Wilson. Micheal Mann turned it into a movie w/ a great cast: Scott Glenn, Gabriel Byrne, Ian KcKellen and Jurgen Prochnow. I liked the movie until I read the book and realized Mann had sacrificed character for nifty photography. Stupid director.

The book is a swift read; it's about a bunch of German soldiers who get stationed in this small keep up in the Romanian mountains. One bored soldier decides someone has buried some treasure in the keep and finds and opens a secret door, letting out Something Eeevil. He gets killed and thereafter the other soldiers get killed off one a night. Considering that the soldiers die by having their throats ripped out (plus the fact they are stationed in Romania), they think they have unleashed a vampire. The German high command thinks otherwise, and sends a few squads of Storm Troopers to figure out what is going on. Toss in a mysterious protagonist who has a psychic connection to the keep, and two Romanian Jewish scholars who have knowledge of the area, and hilarity does not ensue.

This book is one of Wilson's earlier books. I really enjoy his Repairman Jack novels, as well. He wrote three sequels to The Keep, which I have started to re-read. The sequels contain an apocalypse that would turn Joss Whedon green with envy.

Jon and I watched the first part of 10.5, which is as bad as it should be: a series of earthquakes on the west coast is causing major disasters and one dedicated scientist insists that they are merely precursors to The Big One, wherein California, Oregon, and Washington will receive new coast lines. Is that so bad? I don't really have to say it, but I will: Stupid TV show.